End Game Arc 2: Oil & Water
by Suz2
Summary: Vinnie's romance heats up and an old enemy regains her senses.


Author's notes:

This is the second story in an arc that spans a three year period in one possible future for our heroes. My thanks to my Beta reader, Dawnwind, for her encouragement and commentary, as well as her medical expertise. You are encouraged to join her in the feedback loop. My thanks for any critiques you may wish to give. Email reviews and flames can be sent to suzinsf@earthlink.net

Rating: R for language, violence and sexuality. If you find content of this nature offensive, DO NOT READ THIS!

Spoilers: Well, essentially the entire three year run of the series, prior to Ken Wahl's disappearance from the show. This arc disregards the entire 4th season and the 1996 film, sticking strictly to the original cannon.

Disclaimer: Roger Lococco, Vince Terranova, Frank McPike and the Lifeguard, as well as assorted mobsters, are the property of Steven J. Cannell Productions. I took the liberty of dusting them off and taking them down off their shelf to play with them, since their creators weren't using them at the moment. No disrespect is intended, nor is any profit being made.

Summary: An interlude that sees Vinnie's romance heating up - right along with the animosity between Roger and Tracy. Even their recruitment into the OCB doesn't smooth the tensions between them. And an old enemy regains her senses. Apologies for Tracy's Mary Sue tendencies, but since her presence is required to legitimize the boys, they might as well enjoy her company

Wiseguy:

End Game Arc Å Interlude: spring 1998

Oil & Water

Vince sighed as a knock came at the door. Tracy hurriedly tucked her blouse back into the waistband of her skirt and slipped her arms through the sleeves of her suit jacket. Her makeup was a write-off, she realized, and wiped the rest of her lipstick off on the back of her hand, then removed its' imprints from Vinnie's mouth and neck with gentle fingers.

"No rest for the wicked," she smiled at him as the door opened.

McPike and Lococco stepped inside, having ascertained that whatever they were interrupting had moved beyond compromising positions.

"Ms. Steelgrave," McPike acknowledged, unable to completely mask his disapproval. "Vince, Lifeguard just e-mailed the jackets on the guests at the little party Capuzi and Aiuppo threw in here today. You up to a briefing?"

"What if I said no?" Vince asked, a hint of truculence in his tone, as he ran fingers over Tracy's hand, where it lay on the mattress beside his own.

"Stop behaving like a six-year-old, Vince. I get enough of that at home from the twins," McPike said shortly.

"What're you going to do, spank me?" Vince answered sarcastically. It was odd in the extreme to be having this conversation in a room with two other people, neither of whom were — yet — employees of the Justice Department. Years as an undercover operative had left their mark. 

"Don't tempt me. You start behaving like a brat, and I may just," Frank snapped.

"You and what army?" Vince laughed. "Tracy, meet my boss, Frank McPike, Regional Director of the OCB, and Roger Lococco. He's about to become my partner, and agent on point in this little game," he said, making the introductions.

"Vince has told me _so_ much about you," Tracy replied to this with obvious sarcasm as she shook hands with each man in turn, trying to ignore the speed with which Lococco removed his hand from her grasp. She stifled an irrational prickle of anger. The fear, and the accompanying visceral awareness this man had triggered in her in that brief, unguarded exchange of glances over Vinnie's bedside still crackled along her nerves. She smiled pleasantly at each of them and laced her fingers through Vince's. If they wanted her to leave, she resolved, they would have to ask her to.

To her surprise, McPike handed her the same briefing packet that he gave Lococco and Vince. She took hers, looking over the top sheet, listening to the rustle of papers as each man examined theirs. 

"Since you've just publicly announced your engagement to my agent, Ms. Steelgrave, and since I am going to try to secure special agent status for both you and Mr. Lococco with the Attorney General in three weeks, you'd better hear this, too," McPike told her. Your fiancée will undoubtedly be spending a fair amount of time with these characters in the next six months."

"If I'm _lucky_, it'll be six months. It depends on how well hidden the guy running this game is." Vince shifted in his bed, coughing hard, curling onto his side around the pillow that acted as a bolster.

Tracy, masking her surprise, shot an inquiring glance at McPike. "What game?" she asked, curiosity piqued.

"Vince seems to feel that there's some kind of evil genius' at work behind the scenes, stirring up trouble between the mob and the new immigrant gangs," McPike said, his tone leaving little doubt as to his opinion of this. "What I'd like to know, is, how did he jump to that conclusion without an oxygen mask? That's big enough leap to make escape velocity." This last was directed to Vince.

When Vince could speak again, he straightened. "Something Roger said this afternoon made me remember what Mel Profitt told that Voodoo whacko, Louis Cabra, Herb Ketcher wanted to install as the head of the puppet regime on Isle Pavot. He said, I don't take sides.' He said he'd sell arms to anyone who had the money to buy them. So it occurred to me, what if the same thing is happening in New York? Suppose someone's decided they want to take over the mob's action. How would _you_ do it?" He directed the question at Lococco and McPike.

Roger nodded slowly, seeing where Vince was going with this. "I'd misdirect the families' attention from my move by recruiting their competition and setting them up to start tearing at the mob's flanks. When the organization was good and distracted, I'd probably initiate some kind of incident that would trigger a war between the families with interests here, then clean up by selling weapons — or information, or whatever — to both sides. When the dust settled, I'd be the asshole in charge, or maybe I'd be allied with the goomba who was."

Vince nodded while McPike shook his head. "You've spent too long trying to topple governments," Frank told Lococco, "and _you_ have apparently been spending too much time with _him_!" he said to Vince. "That's more than just a stretch," he finished, "it's contortion!"

"No, Frank. I'd be willing to bet that it's a case of opportunity. All it takes is someone with ambition and patience to take advantage of a situation that already existed. I'm not saying that whoever they are, they decided to organize street gangs ten years ago to start cutting in on mob action. But I'd be willing to bet that they saw the possibilities in supporting the trend. They could be sitting on their hands and just watching, but my guess is that they're nudging it along every once in a while. That's where I want the OCB to start looking. I know there have been treaties with the gangs, some that never came off and some that did, then fell apart. I want to know why, and if there's a connection between any of them."

McPike sighed. "I'll start looking into it, but it's gonna take time to research."

Vince nodded. "When they let me outta here, I'll talk to Rudy and see what he remembers. It may give us something to work with."

"So who were those guys in here today?" Tracy asked, "and how do they fit into this — besides being mob, I mean?"

McPike rustled his papers, reading from them. "The current Who's Who' of mob interests in New York. All of them represent territories with considerable investments — and I mean _considerable_ — in various of the Mafia's businesses' in the city, primarily in, but not limited to, Brooklyn."

Tracy nodded absently as she read the summary on the top page of the brief. "So it's their decision to have Vince and Mr. Lococco, here act as pest control?"

"Roger," Lococco corrected, then continued. "It's more in the nature of a private investigation," he said. "The fact that it didn't even occur to them that something bigger might be going on shook them up. We're going in, both as P.I.s and as business consultants."

"That's Roger's area. He's been spending the last ten years empire-building," Vince told her, his tone teasing.

She watched Lococco shrug, not denying it.

"Being independently wealthy has its' upside," he admitted. "Particularly when your friends get themselves into these kind of jams. Money has its' uses. And it's a currency the mob is gonna respect."

"Rog is worth over two billion. He's coming into this to handle the business side of things for me," Vince explained.

Tracy couldn't help her surprise as she turned to look at the lean and lethal man who stood casually next to McPike. "You're _bankrolling_ this?" she asked incredulously.

There was an uncomfortable silence as McPike looked anywhere but at her, the other two men remaining quiet.

Finally, Roger spoke. "Indirectly, I guess you could say that. Even the Reader's Digest version of the whole story is too long for a briefing. Just suffice it to say that I came into my seed capital with Vinnie's help at the end of the case we first met on. I've spent the last few years trying to hand some of it off to him, but he's been pretty damned stubborn about it. This was my chance to rearrange my business interests to make him a partner. And I owe him. For a whole lot more than just my _financial_ freedom. If I can keep him alive through this and see him ride off into the sunset with the girl on his saddlebow and a shot at happily ever after', then I intend to do just that."

Tracy stared at the man, her experience as an attorney telling her that what he said was the truth, though by no means all of it. It was clear that he and Vince had formed a deep bond, one that superceded most other relationships. It both warmed her towards the man, and unaccountably, set a tendril of jealousy snaking through her heart. She realized that he was as committed to Vince as she was. He would be a feature of her life with Vince for the duration of the assignment. The anxiety that this realization brought with it was something she was reluctant to examine too closely without knowing more about him. Roger Lococco was going to be the subject of the next private conversation she could manage with Vinnie. She turned to McPike. "I think I would be wise to schedule an appointment with you. It sounds as though I have a fair amount of homework to do before things progress much farther."

McPike nodded. "Not a bad idea, for any of you. When this starts rolling, Vince is gonna be under a microscope. He'll be relying on the two of you for the bulk of his contact with the OCB."

Lococco nodded. "So give us the dope on these clowns," he said, rattling the sheaf of papers.

Frank sighed, glaring at Roger. "The details are there, but for those among us who are reading-impaired, today's little gathering was attended by several players you may not know. Besides Aiuppo and Capuzi, who've been around since the dawn of time, Carmine DeSouza came up from Miami to make sure his interests were going to be looked after."

Tracy nodded to herself. It was a name she was familiar with.

"The new players are some of the godfathers from Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Chicago and Atlantic City -"

"Castaluccio," Roger interrupted. 

"The man has a reputation as a sharp — at cards, or anything else he does. Don't be fooled by the pretty face. There's a near-genius behind it. If you make any deals with him, make sure you count all your fingers and toes before you leave the table. And whatever you do, stay away from any small, intimate gatherings he invites you to. He likes his sex — shall we say — kinky. He considers himself quite the don Juan. The problem is, he's right. He's seduced more than one of my agents, male _and_ female. So watch yourselves. I don't want any — or all — of you turning up as notches on his bed post. His interests in New York are mostly in the warehouse districts. He's got majority holdings in a number of trucking companies that move over sixty percent of the freight that comes into the city by road."

McPike turned the page, scanning it quickly. "Marcus Maggioncalda took over Mahoney's territory in Philly about three years after he splattered his final thoughts against the back wall of his office. The man's been concentrating heavily on building Philly as a powerbase. He has definite Napoleonic tendencies. He's a better candidate for Vinnie's Moriarty' than some of the others. He graduated _cum laude_ from Harvard School of Economics in Sixty-three, twenty years before Brod and Castellano got their sheepskins. Keep it in mind. He tends to be ahead of the times. If he takes off in a direction, you can be pretty sure whatever it is is gonna be making him a lotta money some time down the road. If he buys stock in something, I'd be watching for it to take off like a rocket within twelve months."

The papers were sifted again. "Cyrus Weinstien. Born in New York in Thirty-eight. A real peach. This sweetheart is the one everybody loves to hate. He grew up in New York and his father ran with some of the legends. He doesn't let anyone forget it. He is one cantankerous sonovabitch, and it doesn't pay to cross him. He's as mean as the day is long — he made his bones by leading a unit of uniforms into an ambush for Genovese when he was fifteen. He's never gotten over the move to Detroit. He thinks he shoulda been given territory in New York and got screwed out of it because — get this — he was discriminated against due to his Jewish ancestry. He's more rabidly Mafia than any of the rest of them, right down to the ring-kissing and the oaths of fealty. His business in New York is in the sweatshops — he's got most of his fingers in the garment trade and the diamond business."

Frank put the pages he'd read face down on the foot of Vince's bed, then continued. "Art Zanetti, our man in Milwaukee. Born in Sicily, immigrated in Thirty-two with his family when he was nine. His father was Consiglieri in New York until he was assassinated when Zanetti was fourteen. This guy takes top honors in the ruthless department. He came up under Al Capone in the late Thirties, running bootleg everything until the war heated up, and had at least twelve confirmed kills to his name that he was never prosecuted for. He served in the Marines for two stints in Africa with the units attached to Montgomery's Desert Rats, then came home and took up where the old man left off. He went through law school at Cambridge and made a lot of connections with the Boston mob. He managed to make a reputation for himself with the Boston crews as an eagle, and defended some of their best hitters on murder charges. He got most of them off, though not necessarily due to the brilliance of his legal strategies — usually it was because he managed to get to someone on the juries. When opportunity dried up in Boston, he headed west to take advantage of a power vacuum, and inherited the position of don about six years ago. He has his hand in a sizable amount of the construction that happens in Manhattan, particularly the skyscrapers. He's got fixes in with the planning commission that lets him put just about anything anywhere he wants it, regardless of what's already there. One of these days he's gonna pull down every last one of the Thirties skyscrapers so one of his glass boxes can go up."

"Why Frank, I didn't know you appreciated the merits of fine architecture," Roger teased him.

"I may be a philistine, but even I can see that the Chrysler building is easier on the eyes then one of Mies Van der Rohe's cubes," McPike snapped.

Roger raised an eyebrow. "A Federal Agent who knows his architects, yet," he said, impressed, and letting McPike know it. "Remind me to discuss American architecture with you some time."

"The next time I have a cocktail party, I'll keep it in mind," McPike retorted as he reached the last dossier. "Last, but not least, Paul Torricelli from Chicago. He is exactly what he looks like, a wiseguy who came up through the ranks — fast. He has a knack for inspiring personal loyalty that you don't see much in the mob these days. He protects his people. You do him a favor and you've got a hellov an ally. Cross him and the ground'll open up and swallow you. He is old school, which is strange, considering he's first generation Mafia. His family has no known connection to the mob before his involvement on the Chicago waterfront. He was a longshoreman and helped organize the unions, then helped turn them over to the mob when they offered him the action. His guys'll go to the wall for him, and he'll return the favor. He also tends to limit the bloodshed to object lessons, usually inflicted on a real hardcase he can't convince to back down any other way. He may be the best bet you have for a real ally in this," McPike told them. "And philosophically, he's the closest thing to a good guy' in the bunch. You play him right and he'll watch your back with the other dons."

Roger nodded. This jibed with his impression of the man. On the rest of them he hadn't yet been able to mesh his instincts with reality. He suspected it would have to wait until he'd had enough sleep to see straight. 

"Realistically, what is the time line here? I'm not exactly conversant with the standard operating procedures for undercover operations — yet another thing I'll have to remedy," Tracy said.

"I'll have one of my training officers brief you in D.C. tomorrow if you can swing it," McPike told her. "I don't want to wait too much longer to try and get you up to speed, even without the Attorney General's okay. I haven't got a clue how long it'll be before things start moving, but I'd be willing to bet as soon as Vinnie is mobile again, they're gonna start riding him for results. This is _not_ a trusting environment. I'm gonna have Vince's Lifeguard assume responsibility for all three of you. He knows how to keep his mouth shut, and it'll simplify things when we get the go-ahead from Reno."

"Aren't you hinging an awful lot of things on the Attorney General's willingness to go along with this?" Tracy asked, perceiving this as a potentially significant hurdle.

"The way I see it, she doesn't have a lot of options. Vince and Roger — and now you — are in place, with a shot at getting to the bottom of a potential criminal conspiracy, and in a position to help the FBI infiltrate the mob at a level we've never had access to before."

"There's a major flaw in your analysis, Mr. McPike. You are dealing with a woman who is under a tremendous amount of pressure from congress right now, both to slap down our esteemed President and get him to zip his pants, as well as to clean up the Justice Department. After Waco and Ruby Ridge, She's likely to be more than a little gun-shy about _fait accompli _when some Federal Agent comes knocking on her door with grandiose schemes like this."

McPike blinked at her, startled, realizing for the first time that this woman was possessed of considerable wit and had the training to wield it.

"She's right, McPike," Roger agreed, his expression pensive. "I've been on the receiving end of enough deals like this that I'd be exercising more than your average amount of enlightened self-interest in her position. I suggest we let Ms. Steelgrave put together a proposal that presents this as an opportunity rather than as another major disaster waiting to happen. And whatever we do, I suggest we make it clear that the Attorney General is the one who's making the decision, here. That we don't proceed without her authority."

"There's one very big problem, Roger," Frank retorted. "The deal has already been made with the mob. We walk out on them now, and the OCB can write off its' infiltration program! We have twenty years of successes and over a hundred agents in place hanging on this deal!"

Lococco nodded again. "_That's_ the way we sell her on it," he told Frank, glancing at Tracy. "The risk of this operation blowing up in her face is no less than the risk to the entire program. The odds are, she'll go for it if it's presented in those terms."

Tracy scowled, aware for the first time that ethical compromise was essential in the world of covert law enforcement. She didn't like the feeling. "Mr. Lococco must be a student of Machiavelli," she said grimly. Lococco's sudden state of alertness confirmed her observation. "Alright. I'll let your training officer sketch out the big picture for me tomorrow. I have a flight back to D.C. in the morning, anyway. I want your assurance that any information I need to put together a palatable proposal will be available to me. I'll need general trends, statistics, all the information that is usually submitted when it comes time to fund the annual budget. A few good anecdotal success stories would be helpful, too." She paused then met McPike's eyes. "And I think you had better arrange for someone to teach me how to handle a weapon."

McPike stared at her for a long moment, then nodded. "I'll make sure you have access to everything you need. Talk to the training officer. He'll set you up with a weapon, an instructor and range times. I'll preauthorize."

She nodded. "Thank you."

"We done here?" Lococco asked, stifling a yawn. "I've got about seventy two hours of sleep to catch up on."

"There's not much more we can do now," McPike agreed. "Get some rest — and report to Uncle Mike when you finish up with the boys tomorrow morning. I want to know you're still standing."

"Will do," Roger said, pulling his sunglasses out of his breast pocket and donning them as he tossed a general nod of farewell at the rest of the room's inhabitants. 

Lococco left the hospital, reveling in the grimy, unfiltered air of a February evening in New York. He had had enough of hospitals to last him the rest of his life, he thought, shrugging into his cashmere greatcoat, and walked slowly to the garage several blocks from the hospital.

He drove to the Waldorf, handing the BMW over to the valet and entered the hotel that was beginning, dismally, to seem like home. He stopped by the concierge's desk and paid for another week's lodging, this time using a credit card, then headed for his suite. He ordered dinner and showered, answering the knock on his door in a towel and with a hundred caught between the first two fingers of his left hand. He assumed control of the cart and handed off the bill to the bellman, who closed the door politely behind himself.

Letting himself relax, finally, after better than a week of minimal sleep and too many drugs, he ate his meal, and then, at last, Roger Lococco went to bed.

ÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅ

Tracy had lingered at the hospital as long as the medical staff would tolerate, simply enjoying the company of her fiancée. Even as ill as he was, he had managed to be charming. It seemed to be something he simply couldn't help, and it went a long way to explaining his facility with undercover work. When he turned those limpid blue eyes on someone, they would have to have a heart of stone not to soften. It was no wonder Sonny had fallen under his spell, she thought, and it was equally no surprise that Sonny's instantaneous liking for Vince had triggered her father's jealousy. It was an odd feeling to be glad that her father had died before he could discover who and what Terranova actually was. Much as she loved her father, she did not like the man he had been. His ruthlessness was a character trait she had been aware of from her childhood, where it had intersected with her sheltered life only in the most minimal ways. And yet it had been such a departure from the father she knew that the incidents remained fixed in her head long after the moments of gentle affection had blurred into vague memories. In some respects, the feelings Lococco triggered in her reminded her of that rush of anxiety that her father's rare tempers had always generated in the pit of her stomach

"Tell me about Roger," she asked, when the nurses had paid their routine visit to draw blood and adjust medications.

Vince considered for a long moment, at a loss as to how to describe the man in such a way as to not trigger some sort of reflex prejudice. "Rog is different," he started.

"_That_ is fairly obvious," Tracy replied dryly. "Stop trying to protect him and just tell me what you know," then smiled at the surprise in his face. "My love, you are totally transparent sometimes," she told him with affection.

Vince didn't try to hide his amazement, but reluctantly began outlining the bare facts, and fleshing them out with information gleaned from ten years of friendship. "He was born in Texas. His folks were oil wild-catters. They hit it big, and sent him off to boarding school when he was six -" 

"_Six_?!" Tracy interrupted, outraged.

Vince nodded, eyes troubled, identifying with her instinctive anger. "That's where he spent the next ten years. He doesn't talk about it much. I don't think he saw his family more than at holidays. He spent summers and Christmas with his grandmother until he was eleven, when she died. After that, he just stopped communicating with his folks, except the bare minimum. He's a genius, literally," Vince told her. "He was two years ahead of his class, and when he was sixteen, he forged his parents' signatures on the paperwork and enlisted in the Marines."

"Geezus," Tracy sighed, unwilling empathy stirring in her. "Vietnam?"

"Eventually," Vince nodded. "Three tours. The first one in Sixty-eight, in the Marines. He was recruited into the Special Forces by Captain Herb Ketcher and went through their training, then went to Nam again in Seventy-one. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and a purple heart for a rescue mission he led to pull a pinned unit of infantry off a hill outside Quang Tri in Seventy-three. While he was in the military hospital at China Beach, his Special Forces commander, Ketcher, recruited him into the CIA. He wasn't even twenty three. He joined the Company in Seventy-four."

Tracy closed her eyes, finally having a sense of where the aura of barely contained violence that clung to Lococco came from. "So then what?"

"Ketcher had him running missions across the boarders into Laos and Cambodia for a couple of years, acting as a training officer to the Laotian and Cambodian guerillas. He pretty much dropped off the face of the planet as far as official records go by Nineteen-seventy four" Vinnie's voice trailed off.

"And?" Tracy prompted.

"He was working as an assassin. Ketcher also had him working with Air America, setting up the routes the CIA used to smuggle drugs out to finance their covert operations in neutral countries."

"God," Tracy sighed. "Why would an intelligent young man allow himself to be used like that?"

"Ketcher was like a father to him. He mentored him, filled his head full of truth, justice and the American way', and then taught him it was okay to subvert those principles in order to uphold them. It's not too dissimilar to the way I've made _my_ living, huh?"

Tracy bit back the reflex denial, forced to acknowledge some measure of truth in this. 

"Roger's first tour out in Sixty-eight, Ketcher was running a couple of missions that were discovered. He assumed that the leak came from the Chinese prostitute he and Roger frequented. He told Roger to kill her."

"Without _proof_?!" Tracy's voice was filled with rage. "Did he?"

Vince leaned his head back against the pillow, staring at the ceiling, unable to meet Tracy's eyes. "Preet was probably the only woman Roger has ever loved. She was about ten years older than him and she was his first lover. He couldn't kill her."

"What did Ketcher do?" she asked, appalled. 

"He made Roger maim her."

"How?" Tracy pressed, voice grim.

"Tracy, you don't want to know this," Vince told her, knowing she would insist.

"Just tell me, Vince. I want to know what kind of man Lococco is."

"He told Rog to cut out her tongue," Vince said quietly to the ceiling. He heard Tracy's inhalation of shock, and turned to meet hazel eyes wide with horror. "It nearly destroyed him. It eventually _did_ destroy his relationship with Ketcher. He got Preet out on one of the last flights before Saigon fell. When Ketcher sent Roger back into southeast Asia, she went with him. She took care of him, he took care of her. She went with him all over the place, on assignments all over the region."

"God, Vince, that is _sick_," Tracy whispered in disbelief.

Vince sighed. "You weren't there. I wasn't there. A seventeen-old kid was. One who's only family was the men he fought with, and the man who commanded him. He was a good soldier, Trace. He did what he was told. And from that day on, he did _only_ that. He had to amputate his conscience — or go insane. He nearly did, anyway. When I met him, he was on the edge."

"How _did_ you meet him?" Tracy asked at last.

Vince hesitated a split second before replying. "We were going after an international arms dealer from two different directions. We brought him down, only Roger was set up as a scapegoat for one of Ketcher's failed missions. When Rog figured it out, he resigned from the CIA. The Company has been trying to kill him ever since."

"Geezus," she sighed. "And I thought _my family_ was corrupt. Now I see why Lococco read Machiavelli. Vince, how can you do this job, knowing the people in positions of power let that power pervert both the letter and the spirit of the law?"

"I'm not doing it for _them_. The people in my old neighborhood live their lives everyday in fear of people like your father and uncle, and the rest of them. I do it to protect those people and their families, Trace. Because someone has to."

Tracy smoothed spiky hair away from Vince's face, wishing she could do something, say something that would ease his disillusionment.

"At least I had people like McPike and my Lifeguard looking out for me. Roger had no one. Ketcher cut him off completely. He never had a clue where Ketcher's orders were coming from, or who gave them. Not until Isle Pavot. He was totally isolated, Tracy. There was no one he could trust."

"Until you showed up," she said, with the realization that Vince inspired that reaction even in people who had every reason to know better. It had to be an invaluable gift. And a nightmare curse, when he was forced to betray that trust. She frowned, processing what he had said. "Isle Pavot?" she added, "wasn't there some coup attempt in the late Eighties that turned out to be CIA inspired'?"

Vince nodded. "Roger testified to it before a Senate Investigating Committee. That's what triggered the shoot-to-kill order on him. As far as I know, it's still standing, even though Stryken, the guy who pulled Ketcher's strings, died of a coronary about three years ago."

"And Roger is still willing to help you with this mess? His name will be coming up in Federal databases! He's either nuts, or suicidal," was her disbelieving conclusion.

Vince's laugh lacked humor. "Funny, that's what he accused _me_ of when he found out who I was planning on marrying."

"Given the circumstances, I can see his point," she admitted, and began to pace a short path alongside Vinnie's bed. "If we're going to see the Attorney General, maybe there's something she can do to rein in the Company. _I_ plan on asking, even if none of the rest of you will."

"Tracy, I don't think Roger will thank you for sticking your nose into it."

"God forbid he accept help, especially from a woman, huh? Well, it may be one of those guy-things he's just going to have to get over." Tracy didn't bother to conceal her annoyance.

Vince caught her hand as she passed within range. "For whatever it's worth, I was going to have McPike try and wangle some sort of cease-and-desist deal. I know how big a risk Roger's taking, Tracy. More than you do. I don't want him risking his life, both with the mob _and_ with the CIA, out of some misguided loyalty to me," he told her.

Tracy turned to look at her fiancée. "Loyalty to you is not misguided. And thinking it is casts aspersions on both Roger's and my intelligence. Vince, hard as it may be for you to accept, Aiuppo is right. You are an honorable man. It shines out of you like light through a window. Why else do you think I would marry a man I barely know and who I love more than life?"

Vince stared at the woman he had promised to marry, amazed that they had managed to stumble back into each other's lives at the precise moment that would have precipitated the events of the last two months. If he had not already been considering resigning, he doubted he would have had the courage to tell her who he was. And without that initial honesty, he would not now stand to gain his heart's desire. He tugged her closer to the bed, reaching up to pull her face down to his own. "I love you, Tracy Steelgrave," he told her as he kissed her.

She kissed him back. It was a matter of seconds before her hair had been freed of its' confines, his hands combing it away from her face, then unfastening her blouse. She laughed softly, half-embarrassed. "Vince, you've got to be kidding," she said, only half objecting. "You can barely sit up!"

He drew her hand down his abdomen and over his loins. "Do I look like I'm kidding?" he asked softly, knowing his desire was unconcealable. "And if you're on top, I won't _have_ to sit up."

She bent to kiss him again, smiling against his mouth. "Just so you don't hurt yourself," she told him.

"Believe me, I'll be hurting a lot more if you leave now," he assured her, eyes sparkling with mischief as he unfastened the front closure of her bra, then the button and zipper of her skirt. 

She shook her head in rueful amusement as she slid the skirt down her legs, stepping out of it, then out of her hose. "I feel like I'm seventeen," she told him, blushing, as she sat on the edge of his bed while he shifted to make room for her, letting her burrow under the blankets. She laughed softly as she fitted her body against his. "It reminds me of trying to make love in the dorms, in college," she confessed. "Only, I swear, these beds are even narrower." She pulled aside his hospital gown and slipped her hands down his ribs, trying to ignore the adhesive tape and gauze that patch-worked the left side of his chest, concentrating instead on his sigh of pleasure at her touch.

Vince trailed fingers down her throat as he kissed her, wishing he had enough freedom of movement, and enough strength, to take her then. He felt her shift, throwing a leg over him and easing herself onto his chest. She kept her weight off him, supporting herself as she straddled him across the hips, moving onto him with more gentleness than he would wish for under any other circumstances. And rational thought became impossible as she began to move against him.

Tracy, relishing her position of control, even if she loathed the reason for it, teased him, courted him, and finally, unable to deny her own need, brought him with her to an elemental state of being, their nerve endings sparking off each other like flint and steel.

"I want a rematch when I get the hell out of this place," Vince told her, as he stroked her breasts with the lightest of touches, still wanting her, though the sharpest need had dimmed slightly. 

"I'll fly down next Friday, after classes," she said, sighing, feeling the effects of his touch in her own quickening. "I suggest you don't make any plans."

He laughed quietly against her neck as he kissed her along the edge of her jaw. "You mean, besides not leaving the bedroom for forty eight hours?" he said.

"Yeah, besides that," Tracy agreed, smiling back at him. To hold and be held, to want and be wanted, had been so rare in her life in the last five years as to have been non-existent. And to love and be loved with this almost fierce intensity was completely without precedent in her life. It was a joy that was nearly painful. She wanted this man, for the whole of her lifetime, the whole of his.

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Roger woke, the sheets wringing wet with sweat, his body hard with vivid, excruciating need. The dream that had woken him had been one of the most erotic he'd ever had, and he didn't know whether to bless or curse the fact that it had not — quite — been wet'. The imagery was blurred, confused, only the physical effects unambiguous. He prayed this was simply another bizarre side effect of the amphetamines he had been living on for the last six days. He reached for his watch, where it lay on the nightstand. It was nearly midnight. He had been asleep only four hours. And unless he did something about relieving the hormone surge that swept him, he doubted he'd be getting any more sleep that night. And yet, the last thing he wanted was company. The prospect of trawling for a willing bedmate in the nearest bar held no interest for him. It was fortunate, he supposed, wryly, that man had been given opposable thumbs. It tended to make self-gratification a fair bit more pleasurable. 

While he generally preferred the real to the imagined, he simply did not have the energy necessary to indulge that preference. He let her come to him, as she had been when she had first brought him to the awareness of what manhood could be, her delicate beauty caught in his mind like photos in a scrapbook. The memory of her — tiny, dark hair, dark eyes, her touch, her body — still roused him ten years after her murder at the orders of his former commanding officer and CIA control. Preet. Who had been all things to him in the course of their twenty-year relationship. Mother, sister, goddess, lover, whore, even nursemaid. He still did not know if what he felt for her was love in the conventionally accepted sense. But she had filled some of the emptiness in his soul, she had held him when he wept, comforted him in all ways a woman could comfort a man. He longed for her as she had been with something near pain. And yet, in that shuddering instant as his body's need was meet, it was not _her_ eyes, _her_ touch that held him. He lay, breathing hard, the vision of hazel eyes flecked with green and a long-limbed dancer's body more real than any woman he had held in ten years. He shivered as the sweat began to dry on his skin, staring sightlessly at the dark ceiling of his room, trying to blot out the dull ache in his chest.

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Tracy tried to stifle the nervousness she felt as she hefted the surprising weight of the automatic pistol the range instructor handed her. It was not a large weapon. That it massed as much as it did was unexpected.

"How much experience with guns do you have?" the instructor asked her, glancing at the wariness on her face and the uncomfortable grip she had on the gun.

"About twenty seconds-worth," she said. "This is the first time I've held one."

The instructor sighed. "Okay," he said, resigned to a long afternoon. "The first thing on the agenda is to stop holding it like you expect it to go off in your face. You treat weapons with respect, not fear. The way to get over being afraid of something is to get to know something about it."

"Whatever you say, she agreed, grimly. "Where do we start?"

"First thing you do is take it apart," was the reply. The instructor collected the small assortment of equipment necessary for the care and maintenance of handguns and beckoned his new pupil to the work bench.

"Hooookay," Tracy said, following him.

"What's your background?" he asked as she laid the gun down on the work surface with obvious relief. "I don't usually get the rookies. Some of the green has usually worn off by the time I see them," he told her.

Tracy laughed shortly. "I'm a lawyer. I suddenly find myself in the position of being required to know something about firearms in conjunction with an FBI undercover operation I stumbled into. Criminal _law_, I can handle. Criminal _actions_, I don't know from shit."

"Well, for one thing, it isn't criminal to own a legally registered firearm." He was hard-pressed to keep his annoyance out of his voice. From the wry look she shot him, he clearly hadn't succeeded. 

"Let's just say I grew up in an environment that encouraged the illegal use of guns. Not to mention all manor of other violence. It's colored my perspective a bit. I'm here to try and overcome some of that mindset, alright? Now teach me how this thing comes apart," she told him.

He had to admit she was a quick study. He had shown her how to take apart the gun and reassemble it, then handed it over to her. She had repeated his actions with very little hesitation, and fewer errors, as he explained the mechanics of firearms and what each piece of the puzzle contributed toward the function of the whole. When he had had her disassemble and reassemble the gun close to a half-dozen times, he led the way to the firing range.

"Shooting is an exercise in physics," he told her as he handed her a set of safety glasses and ear protection. "The bigger the caliber of the bullet, the bigger the diameter of the barrel of the gun, and usually, the greater the length. That means the rifling along the inside is longer because the spirals are compressed, making more turns, which imparts a greater velocity to the bullet, increasing it's range."

Tracy grinned in spite of herself. "It must be a guy-thing, this bigger is always better' deal."

The instructor laughed. "Not necessarily," he said, "Though I'll grant you, it's usually thought of that way. In the real world, how big it is doesn't count for jack if you don't know how to put it where you want it," he grinned back at her.

She laughed, coloring. "I was right. It's a guy-thing."

"So let's teach you how to put it where you want it," he suggested, hanging a paper target silhouette from it's clip, and sending the thing sliding away from them on its' track about fifty feet down range while he donned the protective gear. He stood behind her, helping to position her feet and body relative to each other and the target. He showed her how to sight along the barrel at the target, nudging the inside of her elbows to get her to unlock the joints. "Stay lose," he told her. "When you fire, there's a recoil that's equal to the bullet's kinetic energy when it leaves the barrel. It can be pretty strong in the larger caliber guns. You want your elbows to act as shock absorbers when possible, because it helps keep your gun from shifting position as much, important in a case where you need to fire more than once."

She nodded, fighting the anxiety that seemed to be instinctive in her relationship with the gun. "Alright, now what?"

He leaned impassively against her, arms paralleling hers, his hands covering hers lightly. "Squeeze the trigger — _gently_!" he told her, feeling her finger tighten slowly on the trigger under his hand. "That's right," he said as the gun fired, its' report deafening in the enclosed space. He noted the instinctive control of the recoil she showed, her aim not wavering more than a hairs' breadth. "Again," he told her.

Tracy let her consciousness of everything but the gun and the target fade, ignoring her instructor's presence at her back as she sighted and fired again. He had her empty the clip, then retrieved the target.

"Well, I'd say putting it where you want it is not going to be a problem for you," he said to her as the target came to a stop in front of them. The holes left by thirteen bullets were largely clustered in the center of the chest area of the human-shaped target. "Not bad for your first time out of the gate. I've got twenty-year veterans who can't put them center mass like this." He was impressed. It was not often that he saw a natural. That it would be this woman, a self-confessed neophyte, who would exhibit such an unlikely talent was ironic. He had worked with agents who had spent long hours on the range in an ongoing effort to perfect their skills to this level. "Let's try it again," he suggested, handing her a fresh clip and showing her how to eject the empty one and replace it. This time he stood well back, letting her own sense of the physical relationships between herself, the gun and the target play out. He corrected her stance only once. Again, her bullets were massed around the center of the targets' chest, none more than three inches from what would be the heart of a man. Intrigued, he drew his own weapon and checked it, then handed it to her, moving the target back another fifty feet. "Try this one. It's a thirty-eight. Heavier, longer range. Bigger recoil. Empty it as fast as you can without losing control of where you're putting the bullets."

Tracy took the gun. It was heavier than the one she had just shot, and she hefted it, trying to get a feel for its' balance point and weight distribution. Assuming her stance, she fired once, to get a feeling for the weapon. It jerked in her hands and she changed her grip on it to control the recoil better. Settling herself, she proceeded to empty the gun into the target. When her instructor retrieved it, the center of its' paper chest had fallen away, leaving only a ragged hole about six inches across, its' edges lace-like.

"I'll be damned," he said as he accepted his gun back from her. "You have an instinct for this," he told her. "It doesn't happen often. You play any kind of ball? Anything that requires aim?"

Tracy shrugged. "I used to play some tennis, but it's been years. In all honesty, I haven't had time for it, or much of anything else, until recently."

"I want you to make time for this," he said. "If you're going to be involved in undercover work, it's a handy talent to have. I want to put you through the weapons training course, put you into the simulations. If you can discriminate friend from foe with anything like the accuracy you shoot with, you'll be a hell of a marksman."

"Oh, joy. How long is the course?" Tracy asked reluctantly.

"About sixty hours."

"That'll cut into my job a bit," she said dryly. "I don't think my employers would take very kindly to my disappearing for another week."

"I think you need to reconsider. Maybe I can work out some kind of customized course for you, if the Regional Director okays it. After-hours, maybe?"

Tracy sighed. "If McPike gives it the go-ahead, I'll do it, but only if you can work it out so that it doesn't interfere with my job."

"Where do you work?" he asked.

"I'm teaching at Georgetown this semester. Criminal prosecution and evidence evaluation."

He frowned. "So how the hell does that get you involved in undercover work?"

"I have just become engaged to an OCB agent about to go under deep cover. Mr. McPike feels that some preparation on my part will make me less of a liability," she answered, a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

"When _Mr. McPike_ hears he's got a prodigy on his hands, he may rethink his choice of words. With enough training, you'd be more of an asset than anything." He was genuine in his praise.

Tracy acknowledged his complement, reluctantly flattered. "Maybe it's genetic," she sighed.

"Your family involved in law enforcement?" he asked.

She smiled without humor. "Let's just say they had their run-ins with the law. My family' is Mafia." She saw his surprise, quickly masked. "I've inherited a lot of sins to expiate."

"If none of them were yours, don't take them on. This job is hard enough without assuming emotional burdens that don't belong to you," he told her.

"I'm afraid that's easier said than done," she admitted.

He looked at her, concerned. "Work on it," he told her in all seriousness. "Let's see what else you can shoot," he changed the subject, and went to find an assortment of weapons.

McPike read the report with growing disbelief, then looked up at the range instructor. "You're jerking my chain, right?" he asked.

He shook his head. "No, sir. That girl could hit anything she targeted, with damned near any gun. I had her on everything from .22's to .45's, and I even had her try a few different rifles. She'd be a hellova sniper, in some other universe."

McPike was at a loss as to what to make of this piece of information. "It figures Vince would find himself a ringer," he muttered under his breath. "Alright, Andersen, what's your recommendation?" he asked reluctantly.

"Put her through as much of the weapons course as possible, and get her enrolled in some of the psych classes. If she's gonna be hanging with the players, she's gonna need to know how they think."

McPike sniffed, amused. "She grew _up_ with the players, Jimmy. She could probably teach _us_ a thing or two."

Andersen shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah, so she said. She's carrying around a good-sized guilt complex about it, I'd say." He hesitated. "Who is she?"

McPike's eyes narrowed. "It doesn't leave this room," he told the man, waiting for the nod before continuing. "Her name is Tracy Steelgrave. She's a former mob princess who took the high road. She's been prosecuting West Coast mobsters in Seattle until last year. She's about to marry one of our best field agents."

"The Atlantic City Steelgraves?" Andersen asked, startled. "Geeze. No wonder she has a guilt complex."

McPike ran a hand over the top of his head, sighing. "Okay, I'll arrange it with her. And for a full mental and physical work-up. I guess we should know exactly what we're dealing with."

Andersen nodded, contented with this.

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Roger kicked loose the breaks on the wheelchair, pushing it out of the room and down the hall, its' passenger grinning. "McPike said the range instructor told him he's never seen anyone with an eye that good," Lococco told Terranova, irony evident. "Too bad they don't recruit women snipers."

Vince laughed. "Just try suggesting she shoot someone and see what sort of sniper she'd make," he told Roger.

Roger shook his head. "No, thanks," he said. "She'd probably shoot _me_."

Vince nodded. "She probably would," he agreed, still smiling. "So what happened at the pancake breakfast?" he asked, moving on to another subject.

"Pretty much what you'd expect," Roger replied. "A lot of wrangling over details. Weinstien is gonna be a thorn in our sides about the twenty five percent. Torrecelli is an okay guy, for a hood. He's offered us a couple of soldiers, till we can recruit our own. Our pick. Not mandatory, just an offer."

Vince considered this. "I'd be happier with some local yokels," he told Lococco. "I can probably talk Rudy into a few loaners."

Roger nodded. "Still worth considering," he said. "A little fresh blood can do wonders for the motivation of the old hands. Sides, when they report back to Paul, they'll take back the full scoop. Wax poetic about our brilliance," he smiled faintly, pulling the wheelchair to one side of the bank of elevators, re-engaging the breaks. 

"That presumes we'll _be_ brilliant," Vince pointed out as he levered himself out of the wheelchair and stood, still shaky on his feet after eight days in the hospital. He waited, making sure of his balance, then let Lococco led him onto the elevators. "God, I'll be glad to sleep in my own bed," he told Roger.

"That's something else, Vince. You need to upgrade your domestic arrangements."

Vinnie frowned. "Whadda you mean, upgrade'?"

"A two-bedroom bungalow is fine as a vacation home in the Adirondacks, but for the new prince of the city, it's a little small," Lococco said cynically. "There's no room for the entourage, for one thing. For another, it's totally indefensible. Any drive-by shooter could take you out with a coupla Mac Tens. There's no way to control access."

Vince sighed. "Great. I don't want to be living in some hotel for six months," he groused.

"So maybe you and the sweet thing should start house-hunting this weekend," Lococco suggested. "I'll give you the list of requirements. Just don't commit to anything till I've gone over it with a microscope."

"Tracy and I had other plans," Vince told him, the inference clear.

Lococco tilted his head back with an exasperated sigh. "Okay, lover-boy. I'll start weeding out available options. Maybe you can focus on business after the romantic interlude," he snapped, holding open the elevator doors as Vince moved slowly through them. "But if you limp along like this on Saturday, it's gonna be a hell of a frustrating weekend — for both of you."

"Thanks for the kind words, Rog," Vince retorted.

"Think nothing of it," he said, chuckling as he held open the front doors of the hospital for Vince and walked him across the curb to the waiting limousine. He opened the back passenger door.

"What the hell's this?" Vince asked, peevishly, resisting Roger's attempt to get him into the vehicle.

"Your stepfather requests the pleasure of our company for dinner," Roger answered cynically.

"Peachy," was the muttered response.

"Vincenzo, my boy, you are looking much better," Rudy Aiuppo greeted his stepson warmly, ignoring the cool response to his embrace. "I thought it was time we sat down and discussed the idea that someone is behind the troubles we have been having in the last few years."

Vince sighed, nodding. "I guess so," he conceded. "What do you remember about the various treaties the families have tried to hammer out with the gangs?"

"Not a great deal, Vinnie. Your mother prevented my participation in such things. I can tell you that there was always some problem, though. It did not seem to have a consistent origin, however," the old man said, contemplatively. "If there had been any obvious source, we would have handled it." Aiuppo handed Roger and Vince each a tumbler of grappa, waving them into the chairs before the library fire. He settled himself into the sofa that made up the bottom of the U' formed by the chairs and the fireplace.

"No consistency in origin, maybe, but what about the _type_ of problem?" Vince asked, sipping from his glass.

Aiuppo considered this for a long while. "Again, nothing consistent" he began slowly, then his gaze sharpened as he met Vinnie's look. "But whatever we offered, at some point, we were told that someone else was making a better deal. The deals themselves were never the same twice, which is why it never seemed to have any connection to anything else Sometimes it was drugs, sometimes territories, prostitution, weapons, sometimes numbers, protection, but each time, someone made them a better offer. Or that is what they told us." He watched the look that passed between Vince and Roger. "This sounds familiar?"

Roger laughed humorlessly into his glass. "Oh, yeah," he said, then shot a look at Vince. "Congratulations, Sherlock," he said sardonically. "You've got yourself a criminal conspiracy."

"Yeah," Vince sighed. "Now we just gotta figure out how long it's been going on, and who's behind it. Piece'a cake." His tone was cynical. He turned to Rudy. "Can you set up a meeting with don Capuzi and his Consiglieri, or whoever negotiated the deals?"

Aiuppo nodded. "When?"

"Sooner rather than later. I need everybody to start looking at those deals real hard. We need to know everything about them we can put together. I want to go through them with a fine-tooth comb. And when they've been autopsied, I'm bringing them to McPike to see if the Justice Department can I.D. where the replacement offers were coming from. We're gonna need to be doin' a whole lotta research on gang activity in the last few years," he said to Roger.

"Gotta love that paperwork," Lococco grimaced. "What's for dinner?"

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Against her expectations, Tracy was enjoying the weapons training course. She had spent three hours an evening with her weapons instructor over the course of the week, acquiring a working knowledge of a wide variety of firearms. Her facility with them continued to surprise both herself and her teacher, and she wondered how she would do, when the time came to try the simulated training scenarios'. 

She wondered what Vince thought of her unexpected talent. She had spoken to him only once during the week, after his release from the hospital. He had been distracted, and she had quickly realized that getting his attention when some problem was worrying at him would be an uphill battle. She resolved that she would simply let _him_ call _her_. And in any event, the phone was a poor substitute for his presence at her side, in her bed. She anticipated the weekend with an eagerness that bordered on the absolute. Not even a dressing down by the dean of Georgetown's law school for her disappearance the week before dampened her mood.

When Friday came, she shoved a few items of clothing, a new silk nightgown among them, into an overnight bag and left for her classes. She did not give the students her full attention, she knew, but couldn't seem to focus on anything except the knowledge that she would be in Vinnie's arms in less than a few hours.

They spent the weekend as they had planned, making love and fending off Lococco's determined attempts to get Vince to attend to some item of business that seemed hopelessly trivial. Chewing Roger out for the third time, Vince had finally unplugged the phone, after telling his Lifeguard that he had no intention of making his call in schedule until Sunday night, and that only the direst emergency would be considered suitable grounds for interrupting his weekend.

When she left him at the airport on Sunday evening, it was with a degree of reluctance that she had never felt in her life. The plane doors where being closed before Vince forced her out of his arms and down the boarding ramp. The knowledge that Lococco would usurp his attention for the next five days was an additional torture. She fought the irrational jealousy, not liking what it told her about herself. She had never before been possessive in her affairs, and it was acutely discomfiting to realize she was capable of it. She knew she envied Roger the time he spent with Vince in conjunction with their undercover assignment, envied him the nearly wordless communication he shared with Vince. And most of all, envied him the ten years of friendship he had with her lover. It was an advantage she could never overcome. And even thinking of it in those terms told her she was in serious trouble if she was contemplating her fiancée's partner as a rival for his attention. She _knew_ better than to view it as a competition. The feeling was irrational, but impossible to deny. She recognized that she was going to be profoundly miserable if she could not find a way to overcome this perception.

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Roger was growing to dread weekends. Vinnie's second weekend out of the hospital was a repeat of the first, with his emphatic refusal to participate in anything remotely connected to their assignment for that forty eight hour period. Roger had warned him that if he wasn't careful, Vince would find himself with his brains permanently attached to his testicles. Vince had just laughed and asked him, snidely, if he was jealous. Roger shied away from looking at the answer to that question too closely. The erotic dream he had two weeks before was beginning to become a regular feature of his nights. Always, it began with Preet — and ended with a slender body and green sparks in hazel eyes. It was becoming obvious that his subconscious had focused on his friend's fiancée to a degree that was beginning to border on the obsessive. It was not simply his penchant for married women showing itself, he realized, reluctantly. This particular almost-married woman was profoundly off-limits. So why had his unconscious fixated on her? The answer to that question was something he both needed and feared to know. Even the meditations he had relied on most of his adult life to focus himself were proving nearly useless in the face of this particular problem. While achieving a trance state had never come easily to him before, it was nearly impossible now, his conscious and unconscious mind caught in orbit around the brilliant spark of life that was Tracy Steelgrave's signature in the spiritual plan he sought. He had never had his life so completely disrupted by a woman before, particularly a woman he almost never _saw_.

His awareness of her wasn't limited merely to her physical presence. On the rare occasions he actually spent time in her and Vinnie's company, he was able to sense her mood in an almost eerie fashion. She seldom directed a comment or conversation at him, but when she did, he felt the heat of her attention like the warmth of the summer sun on his vineyards. He could not explain to himself why he basked in that warmth, or whether she was even aware of the effect she had on him. The knowledge that he would be spending a tremendous amount of his time in her vicinity once she and Vince had married sent little currents of uneasiness along his muscles. Even the surcease available in the arms of willing women did not end his desire for his best friend's bride. It manifested in an irritability when in her company that left him snapping at both she and Vince, unable to curb his tongue, his frustration profound. He knew Vince was increasingly aware of the attraction he felt for Tracy. God knew, he had caught enough of those wary looks on Terranova's face in the last weeks.

And now it appeared that the third weekend was likely to go the way of the first two: Vince and Tracy ignoring everything but each other, and him with a truly bad attitude as he spent hours looking at likely real estate with the realtors. He was less and less inclined to bother asking the lovers for input, his temper relieving itself by finding small — and not so small — ways of annoying them. 

When Rudy drew the line at another weekend of seclusion by insisting that Vince, Roger and Tracy appear for dinner on Friday evening, Roger was torn between vengeful satisfaction and the certainty that he would be far and away more discommoded by Tracy's presence than Vince would be by the delay in their romantic plans.

He and Vince met Tracy's commuter hop at quarter to six that Friday, and drove to Aiuppo's house. They were met by Lou Falcone at the door, newly out of the hospital himself, and still pale and drawn-looking. He nodded at the men, then caught Tracy's eye. "Ms. Steelgrave, I promised Vince I'd apologize for all the trouble we brought down on you," he told her. "I'm sorry. You deserved better."

"Damned right," she replied sharply, then spoiled the effect by smiling at him. "I'm glad to see you out of the hospital," she told him. "But if you try something like that on me again, I'll pop you in the mouth!"

Falcone smiled back, accepting both the rebuke and her forgiveness. He led the way to the library, chattering at Tracy like a disingenuous magpie.

Aiuppo let him rattle on briefly, then dismissed him gently, sending him off to ensure that dinner was on schedule. "I have missed him," he told Tracy. "He is like a grandson," as he escorted her to the sofa.

"He's a cutie," she answered, honestly. "I'm glad he pulled through. I know the doctors didn't give him much chance of surviving."

Aiuppo nodded, grimly. "Sometimes, we are given small miracles." He seated Tracy and settled next to her, then waved the other two men into the leather wingbacks, ignoring the flash of annoyance in Vince's blue eyes. "Would you like anything, my dear?" he asked her.

"Something other than grappa," she suggested.

"Vincenzo," Rudy commanded his stepson, who got up and went to the library desk with its' newly replaced burden of decanters.

Vince poured out a measure of grappa for Rudy and then turned to catch Tracy's eye, suddenly realizing that he had no idea what her preference in drinks was, or any of the other myriad details like favorite colors, music, flowers that made up this woman's tastes.

"Gin and tonic," she said, smiling at him.

He made her drink and brought it and the grappa to the sofa, handing them off to the intended recipients. He turned to look Roger's way. "You want anything, Rog?"

"Scotch. Neat," was the taciturn reply.

Vince walked to the desk and poured out the amber liquor into a pair of glasses and returned to his seat, handing one of them to Lococco.

Roger took it, holding it sandwiched between the flats of his palms, rolling the glass slowly back and forth between them, all his attention focused on the play of light in the crystal and its' contents. He steeled himself to wait for whatever bombshell it was that Rudy was likely to set off, barely paying attention to the pleasantries that were being exchanged, withdrawing into the familiar silences of his own mind. It came, as he'd known it would, several minutes into the mundane conversation.

"My dear, have you and Vincenzo set your wedding date?" Aiuppo inquired into a pause in the conversation he had been leading in this direction. He saw the quick exchange of looks between the lovers, correctly interpreting their blank expressions as a negative. "I have taken the liberty of inquiring about available dates at St. Dismith's, Vinnie's brother's old church." He ignored the glower on Vinnie's face, turning to Tracy.

Tracy hesitated. "We haven't really discussed it, but I don't think either of us wants a big wedding. Just family and a few friends," she cast a quick look Vinnie's way for confirmation, relieved at his nod. "I was thinking in terms of a civil service."

Aiuppo shook his head. "This is not simply a union between two people, Tracy. It is a union of Families." 

The emphasis was not lost on anyone in the room.

"By marrying you, Vincenzo legitimizes his place in the Families. It is a thing that must be witnessed by all, attested to by all. His authority as my _cappo_ requires that he be seen to be a man of respect. That respect will be measured by the names of the people who attend the event. It is politics, my dear."

Tracy squelched the flash of anger. "It's _our_ _wedding_," she told him, knowing this was going to be a battle of wills, "not an _event_."

"You are wrong," Aiuppo replied calmly, not acknowledging her annoyance. "It is a display of Vincenzo's power. The spiritual aspects of this are secondary to the political ones."

"To you, maybe," Tracy retorted. "This just happens to be something that affects the rest of our lives, Rudy. I don't want to see it become some sort of circus with you as ringmaster."

Roger listened as the argument progressed, a circular exercise in frustration for Tracy and Vince, who had not yet realized the old man had no intention of letting them have their way on this issue. In Aiuppo's world, the politics of the situation were ready-made to exploit the inroads he'd already made in establishing Vince as power player. He was unable to keep the silent laughter off his face as he gazed into his glass, refusing to risk eye contact.

"What the hell are _you_ laughing at," Vince snapped at Lococco, aware of his amusement.

Roger looked up, gray eyes glinting. "You're the one who wanted to marry a princess, Buckwheat," he said cynically. "Why you're surprised that it's turning into an affair of state is beyond me. Rudy's right. It's a perfect arena for establishing you as a player. One with the sanction of some of the most powerful families in the mob. It'll make the jackals out there think a little harder before they consider harassing you. And it'll give your mastermind a target to focus on. It'll be a whole lot faster if you stand still and let him come to you than trying to beat the underbrush in the hopes of flushing him out," he said, shrugging. "I recommend bowing to the inevitable. The fairytale wedding is gonna happen, whether you like it or not."

Aiuppo, startled by Lococco's seconding of his plans, was unable to marshal a closing argument. Instead, he watched the bitter resignation on Vince and Tracy's faces as they realized that their preferences were without meaning in the situation. It was yet another wedge between himself and his stepson, and he regretted the need to disregard their choices. He sighed. "St. Dismith has dates in July and August that would work with the rest of the families."

"It sounds like you've already put together the guest list," Vince said cynically. "Since this is gonna be _your_ wedding, not ours, why don't you go ahead and plan the whole thing? That way, it'll be everything you want it to be. But I've got a news flash for you, Rudy. Tracy and I aren't waiting till July. I plan on having a ring on her finger by June, at the latest. If you can't make it happen, we're going to elope." Vince didn't look away from his stepfather's gaze, the ultimatum far from empty. He had a vague sense of the difficulty of planning the type of event Rudy proposed. By tightening the deadline, he hoped to make the old don back off, or at least cause him a few sleepless nights. "You have about three months to plan and execute this thing of yours, or Tracy and I make other arrangements." He turned to Lococco. "And since you seem to think this piece of performance art is such a good idea, you're gonna be center stage with Tracy and me. You've just been elected best man', Buckwheat."

Roger stifled the worry in the pit of his stomach, knowing he should have seen this coming. He could see Vince's awareness of his unhappiness at this piece of news, the flicker of a grim smile flitting over Terranova's face as he saw Roger's silent protest.

"It's not like I could ask Frank," Vince pointed out. "That'd put a crimp in Rudy's little drama real fast. Besides, as my business partner, you're the natural choice," Vinnie stated. He glanced at Tracy, seeing her smoldering, mutinous anger at the situation. He suspected they were in for their first argument over this incident. The problem was, he wasn't any happier about it than she was. Politics notwithstanding, it was _not_ the vision he'd had of his marriage.

The rest of the evening passed in uncomfortable tension, as Rudy arrived at terms with Tracy concerning her choices in music and cuisine. He assigned her the task of procuring her dress and the groomsmen's tuxedos, assuming responsibility for all else, save the rings. When he had asked her for her guest list, her laughter had been bitterly ironic.

"Are you kidding? Everyone I know would think I'd completely lost my mind! I'd be embarrassed to invite my friends to this farce. If it's going to be a mob gala, then let it _be_ a mob gala. I'm not going to ask people I care about to sanction something like this!" Tracy categorically refused to budge from this position, telling Rudy he could explain it any way he chose, leaving even the selection of a bridesmaid up to him, not caring in the slightest how he cared to handle that little detail.

She was still quivering with anger when Lococco dropped them at Vinnie's little house hours later. She knew her fiancée was no happier than she at what had transpired, but she was spoiling for a fight and she launched into him as soon as the door had shut behind them. 

He let her rage, knowing that it was not him that she was angry at. Rational argument told him that Aiuppo and Lococco were right in pointing out the political common sense of Rudy's plan. He was willing to bet that Tracy would arrive at the same realization in time. While it didn't make abandoning their own hazy vision of what their wedding should be any easier, it was also not something that ultimately would matter between them. "Trace, we can elope tonight," he said into a pause in her tirade. He watched this unexpected capitulation throw her off balance, startling her out of her fury.

Tracy turned to stare at Vince, disarmed by the gentle sadness in his eyes. The trust she read there that she would do what was necessary wrenched at her. It would not be the last time that compromise between what they wanted and what was necessary to preserve their cover story would come up, she knew with depressing certainty. "Have I ever told you I hate your line of work?" she asked him. "If I thought you were serious, I'd run away with you right now. But you're too good at your job not to know that Rudy is only reinforcing your cover with this stupid idea. Even if we _did_ elope, we'd still have to go through with this, wouldn't we?"

He didn't reply immediately. "Yeah, we would," he admitted, taking her into his arms and holding her. "There's no way to explain what it's like, living your life undercover, but you're starting to get an idea of the downside. It's no fun, Trace. None at all. Why do you think I wanted out?"

She sighed against his chest. "We'll find a way out of this, Vince. Hopefully sooner, rather than later. We have to get to the bottom of this conspiracy you say is trying to pit the families against each other."

"We will. Rog and I have pow-wows scheduled with most of the Consiglieri who've worked with the gangs in the last few years next week and the week after." He sighed and kissed the top of her head. "And Roger has another little job for us. We need to find a place to live," he told her reluctantly.

"What's wrong with here?" Tracy asked, not thinking it through.

"It's a little small, according to him. No room for the entourage'," Vince quoted. "It also leaves us wide open to attack. He's right about that much, it's indefensible." He felt Tracy shiver involuntarily and held her tighter. "I think the honeymoon is over," he added with irony. "I don't think Rudy, Roger or Frank are gonna leave us alone much longer."

"Then we'd better make the most of this weekend," she replied, looking up at him, a wistful smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, as she ran her hands up his back.

He grinned, shadows gone, and reached into his suit for his cell phone, turning it off. Not releasing his hold on her hand, he led her from room to room as he unplugged the phones in the kitchen and livingroom from their jacks, finally bringing her to his bedroom, where he disabled the last of them. "If they want us, they're going to have to use smoke signals to reach us," he told her, unpinning her hair.

Roger knocked again, harder, and tried the doorbell for the third time, met with the same silence that had attended the first two attempts. Growing annoyance was shot through with anxiety and he resorted to using the key Vince had given him, letting himself into Terranova's childhood home. As he shut the door behind him, he heard Vince's quiet moan. The split second between it and the soft, feminine laughter that followed was enough to send a burst of adrenaline through him. He stood in the livingroom, hand on his gun, forcing himself to relax, to let it go. But the irrational anger left behind by the ebbing adrenaline was not so easily dismissed.

Moving silently, he approached Terranova's bedroom. The door stood wide open and the sounds of lovemaking were unmistakable. Lococco tried to ignore the arousal it triggered in him, never more clearly aware of the connection between sex and violence than when it played out in his own bloodstream. He stood in the doorway, making no attempt at stealth, watching them for long seconds.

Vince lay on his back, Tracy straddling his hips, her hands splayed over his chest as she rode him, moving to her own rhythm, to Vince's. Terranova's hands caressed their way up her ribcage, moving to cup her breasts, stroking her erect nipples. She arched her back, sighing softly, eyes closing. Roger, in some small portion of his brain not affected by the biochemistry of lust, noted her slender strength, her complete abandonment under her lover' hands. And knew himself for a fool for entertaining even the slightest speculation on what that body could do, could _be_, with his own. He watched Vinnie shudder, hard, as she leaned forward over him, increasing contact, penetration, saw both of them reach their climaxes, nearly simultaneously. Unable to suppress the anger that flared through him, he rapped his knuckles sharply against the door frame. "Sorry to interrupt, " he told them, knowing the edge in his voice showed. "Vince, I need a minute."

At the first sound of knuckle against wood, Tracy had thrown herself flat against Vinnie's chest with a gasp of astonished embarrassment as he had flipped the sheets up over both of them. Roger neither backed away nor apologized, meeting and holding Vince's angry blue eyes.

"What the _hell_ are you doing here?" Vince asked through gritted teeth as he disentangled himself from his fiancée. He rose, pulling on a pair of sweats.

"McPike and the Lifeguard have been trying to reach you all morning," Roger informed him. "They finally told me to come down here to make sure you and the sweet thing weren't lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor or something." His cynical tone concealed none of his still-burning anger. He let his gaze flick to Tracy, who stared back at him in mute shock at his presence. Roger let his frank appraisal, his arousal, show, rewarded by the sudden flush of color in her cheeks, and her answering anger. She gathered the sheets about herself, and sat up, glaring at him, hazel eyes flashing green.

"Let's take this outside," Vince ordered, catching Lococco's elbow and thrusting him out of the bedroom. He stepped through the door himself, shutting it behind him.

Roger shook off Vinnie's hand, meeting the crackling anger in Terranova's face, knowing that Vince had missed none of the by-play between himself and Tracy. Obediently, he stepped into the livingroom and leaned nonchalantly against the mantle of the fireplace. He waited for the explosion he expected. And was disappointed. 

Vince choked back his rage, recognizing that Lococco was seeking a fight: Roger's attraction to Tracy had just burst into conscious life, leaving Lococco with self-control so fragile it bordered on the nonexistent. Vince recognized the half-crazed edginess in Roger's stance. He took a deep breath. "What the hell was so important you had to walk in on us to deliver the message?" he asked grimly. 

"McPike says the Attorney General has moved up our appointment. We meet her in D.C. this afternoon at four. You, me, and the sweet thing. Oh, and McPike and Beckstead." Roger answered mockingly, reaching into the inside pocket of his leather jacket and removing a pair of airline tickets. He tossed them to the mantle.

Vince gritted his teeth. "Next time, call first," he snarled.

"We tried that. The phones are out of order, and your cell is off." Lococco informed him innocently.

"Gee, I wonder why _that_ was?" Vince said sarcastically.

Whatever Roger was about to say was interrupted by Tracy's entrance from the bedroom. She was clad in Vinnie's old Fordham University sweatshirt and a pair of his boxers. Or perhaps the boxers were hers. Roger could not have said with any certainty, his new sensory perception making him innately aware of her anger at him, and the unrelieved sexual tension in her. It resonated off his own, and his body responded instinctively. 

"Mr. Lococco, you are quite possibly the rudest man it has ever been my misfortune to encounter," Tracy opened as she stalked into the livingroom and moved to Vinnie's side, sliding an arm around him.

"Roger," Lococco corrected, not for the first — and undoubtedly not for the last — time.

"_Mr_. Lococco," Tracy reiterated, obstinately.

Roger shrugged, letting her have her way. "I'm just the delivery boy. Consider yourselves duly informed." He indulged in a last, blatant, glance over Tracy Steelgrave's body before turning back to Vince, his eyes going cold. "I'll see you at the airport at quarter to two," he said frigidly, then turned and walked out of the little house, slamming the door after himself.

He really needed to do something about getting himself laid, he thought irritably as he got into the convertible, chirping rubber from the tires as he gunned the engine, pulling into the street.

Vince leaned his elbows on the mantle, resting his forehead on his hands, wondering how on earth he was going to deal with Roger's obvious desire for Tracy. He felt her put her arms around him, resting her cheek against his back

"That man is a sexist pig," Tracy said. "The next time he calls me sweet thing' I'm going to castrate him."

"Don't take it personally," he told her. "It's just one of his many annoying habits, like calling me Buckwheat'."

"And I guess I'm not supposed to take his sex-offender attitude personally either?" Tracy didn't hide her annoyance.

Vince sighed, rubbing his forehead. "Roger would never force a woman. He doesn't have to. They usually fall for that coiled snake' routine like a ton of bricks."

"Not _this_ one," she said coldly, starting to walk away from Vince, back toward the bedroom.

"Good," he answered, reaching out to catch her hand, pulling her back into his arms. "He'll get over it. Or he'll learn to live with it." Vince offered up a silent prayer that he was right. That Lococco had not stepped off an emotional precipice into the free-fall of an unrequited love. And that if he had, Tracy would not fall with him.

The intimate touch of her hands on him distracted him from his worry, losing himself in the exquisite pleasure she was able to evoke. He could feel her desire for him in the boldness of her mouth and fingers on his skin, in her instinctive search for the most sensitive flesh, the most responsive of nerve-endings. His own body's arousal was primal. He wanted her to the exclusion of all else, a victim of her single-minded seduction. The nagging suspicion that it was as much Lococco's need as his own that she was answering only made his desire more intense, a realization that both terrified and exhilarated him. He had seen the genesis of this in their first encounter over his hospital bed three weeks before. He wondered, in the brief moments before he was left incapable of thought, how long it would be before Tracy became aware of her instinctive attraction to Roger. And what he would do if the two ever acted upon the intensity of that bond.

Tracy stared into Vinnie's eyes, seeing her own awe mirrored there. It had been unlike any other sexual experience she had ever had. Her body still vibrated like a plucked harp string, even now, desire unslaked. She lay tangled in Vinnie's arms, his body, feeling super-human, as though she could spend eternity there, making love to him. She cursed Lococco and the airline tickets that meant her treasured weekend was about to be cut short. Even meeting with the Attorney General of the United Sates wasn't inducement enough to leave the tiny paradise of Vinnie's bed. She touched him again, feeling his helpless reaction, knowing he felt the same unquenchable need that blazed in her.

They had cut it as fine as possible, sprinting down the boarding ramp minutes before the doors closed. They found their seats in first class, ignoring the sardonic speculation on Lococco's face as he cocked an eyebrow at their precipitous arrival.

"Nice of you two to join me," Roger said sarcastically, grinning at the unconcealed ire on Tracy's face. He went back to the view out of the window of the plane, trying to ignore the sense of her his new perception gave him. It was outside his considerable experience, this awareness of a woman. He was at a loss as to how to deal with it. And he was equally aware that he had to find a way, or risk losing his way in unknown realms.

He spent the short flight ignoring them as studiously as they ignored him. He followed them off the plane and up the ramp, practicing his version of a cloak of invisibility. It was a skill he had picked up over the course of his work in the CIA, and it still proved useful. Generally, when he exercised this particular talent, the other occupants of a room simply forgot his existence, proceeding with their conversation as if he were no more than some piece of furniture.

When Tracy turned to look straight at him, meeting his gaze with her own still-angry one, the same raw shock of her awareness of him, the breaching of his defenses, tore through him with pain as intense as the first time he had met that look. Invisibility was impossible in her eyes, he knew with terrifying certainty. They perturbed each other's orbits like rogue planets, the gravitational attraction of their encounters rearranging the heavens. Her awareness of him was as complete as his of her. Her anger gave way to fear, darkening her eyes as it had the first time she had _seen_ into him this way. It made something in his chest clench in agony. In that second, he would have given anything he possessed to wipe it from her heart, to read welcome there rather than visceral terror.

When she looked away, he felt his knees weaken as though he were going to fall, every muscle quivering with reaction. The roaring in his ears deafened him to everything save the pounding of his heart. Dazed, he followed the pair out of the gate, trailing them silently to the car rental booth, then out to the parking lot. Unprotestingly, he took the back seat, staring silently out into the city as they drove into the heart of D.C..

Vince glanced into the rear view mirror, concerned. Lococco's silence and the pallor of his skin under the vestiges of his California tan worried him. The subtle tension that usually radiated from Roger was absent. He looked defeated. It reminded Vinnie suddenly of the pain Lococco had been in as he had finally confronted Ketcher in a dilapidated Stockton warehouse on the eve of the Isle Pavot invasion. Now, as then, Roger looked naked. Stripped of the emotional armor he wore like a second skin. Achingly vulnerable. 

Unable to pin down the source of Lococco's abrupt change of mood, he worried. He didn't like the idea of exposing Roger to the vicissitudes of the Justice Department when the man was clearly unable to defend himself against the onslaught Beckstead would undoubtedly unleash on them. When he shot a look across to Tracy, the worry became more intense. She shared Lococco's withdrawn silence, her usually clear eyes hooded, uneasy. Something had happened between the two, something subtle enough that he had missed the actual event and was now left to guess at its' source, and yet whatever it had been, it had disturbed both of them deeply. Anxiety unwound through him, his belly tightening with something near fear.

McPike met them outside the Attorney General's office. He exchanged greetings with the trio, gradually becoming aware that something was off. Lococco, generally quiet, was positively silent, clearly distracted by his private thoughts. Tension clouded the space around Vince and Tracy as well. His own alarms were going off and he drew Vince to one side. "What's up?" he asked softly.

"I wish I knew," Vinnie said, equally softly, casting a glance at his two companions. "Rog and I almost had a knock-down, drag-out this morning, but something else is going on with him. And Trace. Frank," he paused, his uncertainty completely obvious to McPike, "They're like oil and water. They can't be in the same room without taking potshots at each other."

McPike grimaced. From his perspective, it was clear that both Tracy Steelgrave and Roger Lococco held proprietary interests in Vince, and Vinnie's attention. Jealousy was never pretty, but in this situation, it was potentially fatal. "Can they work it out?" he asked at last.

"I don't know, Frank. I'll talk to Tracy tonight. I'm not even sure she knows she sets Rog off."

"Vinnie, you can't afford the distraction of keeping the two of them apart. You're going to need all your attention focused on the big picture, here. If you can't do it, I need to know now, before this goes any farther."

"It's already gone too far to pull out now," Vince said.

"No. It may cost us the infiltration program, but I am going to put a stop to this if you aren't completely sure you can negotiate some kind of armistice between those two." He jerked his head toward Vinnie's partners, who stood barely three feet apart, yet managed to convey a gulf between them of infinite proportions.

Vinnie followed his look. "We'll make it work," he said at last. "I need both of them to pull this off." He turned away and walked back to his companions.

McPike stared after him, unsettled by the disharmony among what he had come to think of as _his_ team. Stiffening his spine, he herded the small group into the anteroom of Reno's office, giving his name to the assistant there.

"She'll be with you shortly, Mr. McPike," was the courteous response.

Fifteen minutes later, they were ushered into the Attorney General's office. "Randall, hold my calls. This is a priority meeting. When Director Beckstead gets here, show him in." Reno instructed her assistant, who nodded, shutting the door quietly behind himself.

The Attorney General shook hands with each of them, then returned to her desk, one hand in the pocket of her suit jacket to still the slight tremor symptomatic of her Parkinson's disease. She looked weary, McPike mused, not envying her the pressures and responsibilities of her job. Especially not under the current chief of state.

Tracy put her briefcase in her lap and opened it, removing a videotape and an assortment of file folders before closing it again and placing it on the floor beside her chair. She cast a look of inquiry at the Attorney General, who hit some sort of control. A section of paneling on the wall opposite her desk slid open to reveal state-of-the-art video equipment. 

Reno turned the system on with a remote and Tracy rose, walking over to insert the tape into the VCR. She returned to her seat, focusing her attention on the head of the Justice Department. 

"A situation exists in New York that has come to the attention of the OCB very recently," McPike began. "Our agent, Vince Terranova," he waved a hand in Vinnie's direction, "has been working undercover for the last ten years, in a variety of organizations. His initial connections were in Atlantic City, where he infiltrated and brought down the Steelgraves, Paul Patrice and Mac Mahoney -"

Reno nodded. "I'm familiar with Mr. Terranova's work. I read the files on him, and on the rest of you, for that matter," she said brusquely. "You've had an illustrious career," she said to Vinnie. She turned to Lococco. "You, on the other hand, seem to have stumbled into the worst of the moral ambiguity of this kind of work." She met Roger's glacial gaze, unfazed by the subtle menace that suddenly limned his posture. "I seem to recall that the official reports state that you were killed in an explosion ten years ago. You seem inordinately healthy for a dead man, Mr. Lococco."

"It pays to eat your veggies," Roger quipped, ignoring the shock on McPike's face.

To the surprise of everyone — except Roger, Reno laughed. "I'll bear that in mind." She turned to McPike. "Take it as read that I know who the players are," she told him. "Now, why are we here?"

McPike took a deep breath and began, outlining briefly Aiuppo's courtship of Vinnie, the events that had led up to the current situation, Roger's involvement as a civilian', Vince and Tracy's engagement, and finally the offer they had been made by the mafia families with interests in New York. When he had finished, Tracy played the videotape she had compiled of biographical information on the mafia dons that were central to the action.

Reno followed all of this without interruption. When Tracy and McPike had concluded the overview, she leaned back in her desk chair, eyeing them. "And what is it that makes you so sure that there is a criminal conspiracy here?" she asked them, not appearing to care who answered.

Tracy picked up the ball, handing the Attorney General the first of her files. "It is the nature of police work to rely on intuition as a starting point in an investigation," she began. "At the moment, Vince's experience — and Roger's — in this area are our strongest evidence. There was some concern that we proceed with caution until we could obtain official authorization. However, they have tentative meetings scheduled with the families involved in an attempt to quantify any similarities in details regarding the collapse of the deals made with rival gangs."

"So you're telling me that all we have to go on is intuition?" Reno looked up from the files and eyed Tracy.

"For the moment," Tracy agreed. "But the response among the families when the idea was suggested led Agent Terranova to believe that it was a possibility that had not occurred to them previously. It is also a possibility that is producing enough anxiety to bring them to agree to place Vince in a position of power in the city in order to prove or disprove it."

"The Justice Department has not shown itself to be possessed of the most accurate hunches as of late, Ms. Steelgrave. Why should I assume that Agent Terranova's instincts are any better than the ones that led to some of the recent debacles for which I am _still_ catching the flak?"

"For one thing," Lococco said, interjecting, "he's alive. You don't generally survive ten years in undercover work unless your hunches' are a hellova lot better than average."

The Attorney General glanced at Lococco sharply. "Having survived fifteen years in the CIA, and another ten years on your own after having seriously pissed them off, I suppose you speak with a certain degree of authority," she conceded. "However, I am not convinced that placing two civilians and an OCB operative in place as the titular Prince of the City' and his loyal followers is wise. You realize, I imagine, what happens if the press gets wind of this?"

"Your ass is grass," Roger stated baldly. "And Vinnie, his bride and I wind up washing up on the Jersey shore, in chunks." He met the Attorney General eyes unflinchingly. "We're willing to take the risk, because we know — and trust — Vinnie's hunches, and because there is just enough corroborating evidence to make us think he's on the right track." He paused. "And if he's right, you could be looking at a _major_ turf war down the line. What happens if the press gets a hold of _that_?" he asked.

"One of the things I love about this job is that, generally speaking, I'm pretty well fucked, whatever I do." Reno stated.

"Another point to consider," Tracy assumed control of the conversation, "is that the OCB's twenty-year program to infiltrate criminal organizations is potentially jeopardized by our refusal to pursue this. The only way that Agent Terranova, myself or Mr. Lococco can walk away from the situation now is through the Witness Protection program. And if we were to do so, the mob will very quickly begin to reevaluate every member of their organization, and a large number of agents in place will be put in unnecessary danger."

Reno leaned back in her chair, the faint smile not reaching her eyes. "I see your history as a prosecutor showing," she told Tracy. "You don't bother to pretty-it-up for the crowd."

"I've generally had the best results with the facts, ma'am," Tracy confirmed. "When it comes down to it, the truth is generally the most powerful argument that can be made."

Reno looked at her for a long moment before responding. "Tell me, Ms. Steelgrave, do you love this man enough to risk your _life_ to provide him the cachet of your name?" she gestured to Vince without breaking eye contact with Tracy.

Tracy was unblinking. "Yes." Her reply was without hesitation or equivocation. 

Reno nodded slightly. "Well," she looked at McPike, "you've dressed it up very nicely, but what I'm hearing is that, essentially, this is a done deal, unless I want to assume responsibility for single-handedly shutting down an FBI division that has produced a significant number of successful prosecutions."

McPike shifted uncomfortably. "Yes, ma'am."

"So what kind of support do you need from me?" she asked.

"Special agent status for Mr. Lococco and Ms. Steelgrave," Frank told her bluntly. "None of us want the potential headaches that would be involved if it's discovered that the OCB is using civilians in its' operations."

"You can say that again," came a clearly angry agreement from the door.

All eyes turned to Paul Beckstead, the Director of the OCB as he stormed into the room.

"Director Beckstead," Reno greeted him calmly. "Please, join us. I'm afraid I had them begin without you. I assumed that you were aware of the bulk of the situation."

"With the exception of the fact that there are civilians involved, I thought I was," Beckstead glowered at McPike.

"Officially, as of about ten seconds ago, there _are_ no civilians involved. Regional Director McPike has asked for special agent status for Lococco and Steelgrave, which I see no reason to deny."

Beckstead sat in the chair next to Frank's, glaring at his subordinate.

"Which I can also see was a request made over your head. Perhaps you could state your objections?" the Attorney General encouraged.

"Mr. Lococco has a history of instability that leaves me uncomfortable with the idea of placing him in this position, regardless of his lethal expertise. And status notwithstanding, _Ms. Steelgrave hasn't got the first idea of what is involved in undercover work!_" Beckstead's displeasure was readily apparent. "The agents we place have _years_ of training before they ever hit the streets!"

"All of which is true," Reno agreed. "However, the choice I've been presented with is essentially this: we can proceed with this insertion, putting three people's lives at risk, or we can do nothing, putting the city of New York at risk for a gang war of monumental proportions, as well as drawing mob attention to the OCB's ongoing penetration program."

"We're risking the program by going ahead with this," Beckstead replied grimly. "If any of them break their cover, we might as well hand out cyanide pills to _all_ my agents. Because they'll be as dead as last weeks news."

"It's a question of probability," Reno said. "They _may_ blow their cover. But it is reasonably certain that if we _don't_ place them, the OCB's days are numbered. Welcome to the pleasures of life at the top, Mr. Beckstead," the Attorney General said cheerfully.

The discussion continued, with the issue of funding assuming its' place as the next bone of contention. McPike nodded to Tracy to hand over the financial documentation of the hundred million that the OCB had discovered', well aware that neither the Attorney General nor Beckstead were convinced by the seeming coincidence, but unable to deny the convenience of the presence of the money.

By the time the meeting had concluded, Beckstead had resigned himself to the fact of the operation, and its' participants. The majority of the details had been hammered out and Reno was clearly ready to table the discussion when Tracy spoke up.

"There's one last hurdle," she said quietly, shutting out her awareness of the disapproval of the men in the room. She made eye contact with the Attorney General. "Roger Lococco is putting his life at risk. Not only the mob, but his own government may well try to kill him. His name will be coming up in Federal databases in conjunction with this case. That may be enough to draw the CIA's attention to him. His last encounter with the Company was an attempt on his life."

Reno contemplated this. "There's not much I can do to restrain them, but I will make it very clear to the Director of Central Intelligence that if Lococco is assassinated, it will put a sanctioned operation in jeopardy. And that may very well draw attention to them and their activities inside the country that they would rather avoid."

Tracy nodded. "Thank you."

"Are we finished, here?" the Attorney General asked.

Their dismissal was clear, and they rose as a group, moving to the door.

"Ms. Steelgrave, a moment, please," Reno commanded.

Vinnie paused, glancing between the Attorney General and his fiancée uneasily. Tracy touched him on the arm and reluctantly, he left her to the tender mercies of the head of the Justice Department.

Tracy turned to face Attorney General Reno, trying not to betray her sudden case of nerves.

"Ms. Steelgrave, you realize how dangerous this will be?"

Tracy nodded. "Yes, ma'am. I'm only too aware of what happens to someone the mob suspects of betraying them." Her voice was grim.

"Good thinking on the Lococco issue," Reno complemented. "Trust a woman to spot something so obvious it went over the heads of the estrogen-impaired."

"No, they're all too aware of it," Tracy corrected, amused, "Trust a woman to _mention_ it."

Reno smiled faintly. "I want you to be absolutely clear on what you will be getting involved in. I'll make all of Agent Terranova's case files available to you, and I want you to read them. Carefully, as much for what is omitted as for what is included, and for what is present _between_ the lines. In addition, I want you to watch the archive footage of the Isle Pavot hearings. It will add some perspective to your understanding of that situation, and why it resulted in Lococco being placed under termination sanction. You would be well advised to know as much as possible about the men you'll be spending the foreseeable future with, good _and_ bad."

"Yes, ma'am," she agreed.

"And for the record, my name is Janet," Reno smiled, the first one to reach her eyes. "Best of luck," she added, shaking Tracy's hand again, and showing her out.

Roger leaned against the wall, arms crossed against his chest, eyes on the tips of his shoes, considering the last interchange in the Attorney General's office. That it had been Tracy who had pointed out the risks that Roger was knowingly assuming by coming to Vinnie's assistance, and to then ask for the Attorney General's intervention, had surprised him completely. He wondered at the quality of a mercy shown even in the face of her clear fear of and dislike for him, and wondered at the ache it put in his chest. Not Since Preet's death had he hurt this way over a woman, with a pain that had no physical location, no source. No trace. Tracy Steelgrave tormented him, waking and sleeping, and the desire he felt for her was neither tempered nor relieved by his jealousy of her and his irritation at her effortless ability to completely distract Vince from the job at hand. And every time he had shorn up the barriers to feeling, raising the edge of his razor wit in self defense, she would catch his eye, her instinctive knowledge of him revealing his defenses as so much substanceless fantasy. He had no idea how to protect himself from what he felt. He was increasingly afraid he would break under the onrush of an emotional pain that made what he had experienced in the past pale into insignificance. He was startled out of his brooding silence by Vince's hand on his shoulder, and he flinched involuntarily under the touch as though from a blow.

"You alright, man?" Vinnie asked, feeling Roger's instinctive withdrawal from contact. The new, deeper lines around Roger's eyes worried Vince, knowing them as he did as the harbingers of some new pain in his friend's soul. A pain he feared had Tracy's imprint on it.

"Just dandy," Lococco snarled, unable to help himself, then regretting it as he saw the empathy in the flicker of sadness in Vinnie's face. He took a deep breath. "I'm fine, Vince," he said, quietly. "Stop worrying about me."

"We're gonna have to talk about it," Vince told him.

"But not in the halls of the Justice Building," Roger snapped, straightening away from the wall, hands dropping to his side as he caught sight of Tracy as she exited the Attorney General's office, slinging the shoulder strap of her soft leather briefcase over her arm. He turned away from her, focusing instead on McPike's conversation with Beckstead, feeling Terranova walk away from him to meet his bride.

"I'd have appreciated a little faith, Frank," Beckstead told McPike, still annoyed at the way the meeting had gone.

"Paul, you've always made it completely clear how you felt about civilian participation in an operation. The problem is, these two aren't just _any_ civilians. And if Vinnie is right about his evil genius', putting him into Brooklyn as deep as he'll have to go to flush him out is just asking for a meltdown. I want people around him he can trust, who trust him, and who'll keep him from losing track of which side of this game he's _on_." Frank was emphatic. "And Lococco has the training and the skills to keep Vince and the girl protected."

"Granted," Beckstead agreed reluctantly. "I just wish you had come to me with the whole picture. And I want the real story on where Mel Profitt's hundred million suddenly appeared from."

"I had it," Roger spoke up, gratified to see both men start. It just went to show that his invisibility trick worked, on most people. "It was the only thing I walked away from Isle Pavot with," he added calmly.

Beckstead stared at Lococco, clearly undecided about whether to launch into him regarding evidence tampering, then thought better of it. "Well we've got it now. Better late than never," he said drolly.

"It never affected any of the arrests we made. The only ones who were S.O.L. were the IRS and their team of vultures. Considering how hard it is to get funding for our department, I can't say I'm sorry we got our hands on it first." McPike, more experienced with Lococco's knack for appearing and disappearing at will, gave no further sign of that momentary surprise. He turned to Roger. "You having any luck finding a base of operations?" he asked.

Roger shrugged. "I'm apparently the only one who thinks it's an issue. Let's just say I'm having a hard time getting the lovebirds to concentrate on finding a nest to feather. There's only so much billing and cooing an uninvolved bystander can stand. And I have a low tolerance for saccharine."

McPike's eyes narrowed at the sharper-than-usual edge in Lococco's tone. "You having a problem with Ms. Steelgrave?"

"No. No problem. What I'm having a _problem_ with is Vince and getting him to pay attention to business when she's anywhere in sensor range." Roger forced himself to unclench his jaw. "Let's just say he's having a focus issue'."

McPike scowled. "I have an appointment with her this week. Want me to talk to her?"

Roger shook his head slightly. "You can try," he said. "I don't hold out much hope that'll do any good. We are dealing with a couple of people with pure, unadulterated love potion number nine' running through their veins. Until the novelty wears off, I don't think it'll change."

McPike glanced toward where Vince and Tracy stood, speaking quietly together, oblivious to what happened around them. He could understand Lococco's irritation at the competition for Vince's attention. He resolved to talk to both Terranova and Steelgrave about maintaining attention on the operation.

Vince had gone home with Tracy, having elected to spend the rest of the weekend with her in her D.C. apartment, Roger returning to New York and a Sunday spent examining real estate.

"I think I should meet your mother," Vince told Tracy that evening as they lay sprawled comfortably across her bed, watching a Harrison Ford film and eating popcorn. He saw her startled discomfort at the suggestion. "What? I'm too much of an obvious wiseguy for you to introduce me to her?" he asked, the irony in his voice not disguising his bitterness.

"Vinnie," she began, not knowing how to proceed. "I haven't even _told_ her about you," she confessed. "She hasn't been doing real well. Her medication sometimes seems worse than the cancer."

"I think maybe it's time, Trace. Don't you think she'd want to know you plan on marrying me?" he asked gently.

She met blue eyes reluctantly, not quite sure why she was so hesitant. But he was right. If she truly intended to spend her life with this man, they needed to know a great deal more about each other. "I just wish I could have met _your_ mother. It's like I'm cut off from your childhood, Vinnie. But you'll get to ask my mom about what a brat I was all through high school, what my senior prom was like, all that embarrassing stuff that makes you cringe when you go back and think about it from an adult perspective. And she's a mom, Vince, she loves reminiscing. And it's almost always about the things I can't believe I actually did." She shuddered involuntarily, then glared at his delighted amusement.

"Now I'm _sure_ it's time for me to meet her," he told her, running fingertips up her side, tickling her. "I promise, I'll let you ask me all the embarrassing stuff you want to know about my childhood. I can probably even find my mother's old photo albums, if you really want embarrassing." He laughed as she pummeled him, wrapping his arms around her to pinion her, then kissing her into submission.

Their lovemaking that night was playful, teasing, far more light-hearted than the white heat of that morning. It was sex as play, gentle and exploratory. They discovered things about each other, and themselves, that they hadn't known with other lovers. New paths to pleasure that left them satiated and reveling in the simple comfort of each other's arms.

The house in Virginia Tracy's mother had moved into on her return from California six years previously was a spacious colonial-style home, far less pretentious than the house Tracy had grown up in.

Rita Steelgrave greeted her daughter affectionately, hugging her and kissing her cheek. "So who's Mr. tall, dark and handsome'?" she asked in a whisper, glancing at the man Tracy had brought with her where he stood in the entry hall, hanging his and Tracy's heavy coats on the hall tree.

"Mom!" Tracy chastised softly as Vince turned and entered the room. "Mom, I'd like you to meet Vincent Terranova," she said, making the introduction. "Vince, this is my mom, Rita Steelgrave."

Rita shook the proffered hand, noting the restrained, almost gentle clasp of the man's hand on her own. Promising, she thought. The direct, surprisingly brilliant blue eyes were equally promising. But it was the expression in them when Vince turned to Tracy that made her smile. This was a man in love. "Vincent, a pleasure. My daughter isn't exactly a social butterfly, so I don't get to meet her friends often."

Vince smiled at the woman, seeing where Tracy's wit and erudition had their origin. Even terminally ill, Rita Steelgrave took pains with her appearance. The vestiges of considerable beauty were clear, even through the pain that left its' scars on her face and in the restriction of her movements. "I've been bugging her to meet you," he told her, "but she made me promise not to ask you any embarrassing questions about her childhood before she'd agree," he grinned impishly, raising an arm to fend off the half-playful blow Tracy swung at him.

"You _brat_!" Tracy exclaimed, blushing, letting Vinnie slide an arm around her waist.

Vince saw Rita's raised eyebrow, and her smile of maternal satisfaction. She led the way, slowly, into the livingroom, seating her guests before settling herself. She gestured at the silver coffee service, encouraging them to help themselves. When Tracy had poured out coffee for she and Vince, Rita smiled at them. "So when are you planning on marrying my daughter?" she asked Vince. To his credit, he merely blinked, before a slow grin crept over his features. Both of them ignored Tracy's mortification as she buried her face in her hands.

"I see where Trace gets her brains from," he said. "Immediately, if not sooner," he told her.

"You're quite the charmer," she laughed, understanding exactly what Tracy saw in this tall, stocky and seriously good-looking man. 

"It's a gift," he said with clear cynicism.

"Actually, it _is_," Rita agreed, glancing at her daughter, who was blushing furiously. "It was the first thing I fell for in Tracy's father."

Vince smiled politely, unable to reconcile the word charming' with the ruthless man he had known Dave Steelgrave to be.

"So how did you meet?" Rita asked.

"We knew each other casually a few years ago. I ran into Tracy outside the Justice Building in D.C. just before Christmas. Things just sort of clicked."

"You've been dating since Christmas?" she asked Tracy, cocking an eyebrow, obviously wondering why this was the first she had heard of a beau.

"Not exactly," Tracy said. "Vince was — away — on business until February."

"What business are you in?" Rita asked, curious.

This question was the one Vince and Tracy had spent time trying to produce a palatable answer for. "My business partner and I have a holding company. Primarily, we're involved with the food service industries and related fields. Roger's personal pet is the wine industry, and restaurants. I'm more of a generalist. I'm the one who moves around, putting out the fires."

"The wine industry?" Rita's interest was genuine. "Do you own vineyards, or do you produce the wine?"

"Both, actually. We have a thousand acres in Sonoma, with other parcels in Mendocino and just north of Santa Barbara. The winery is new, though. Roger's first vintage from the new vines is headed for an international competition in France this fall."

"I'd love to taste it, some time," Rita told him honestly.

"Mom, you know you're not supposed to drink," Tracy admonished. "It messes up your blood sugar."

"Sweetheart, I don't think a few sips of wine are going to be the final nail in my coffin. And even if they are, it'll at least taste better than the vile stuff Dr. Arnot is making me swallow for his dratted tests," Rita smiled at her daughter indulgently.

"I'll see if I can get some shipped out for you," Vince said, hoping Roger wouldn't have a fit. "We haven't even finalized the label design, yet, but I'll get the winemaker to fill a couple of bottles."

"Can you two stay for dinner?" Rita asked, glancing between them.

Reluctantly, Vince shook his head. "I have a flight to New York tonight. "My partner and I are in the process of opening an East Coast office, so we've got our work cut out for us."

"Well, then we'll just have to see how many embarrassing stories I can find to tell you before you have to leave," Rita smiled impishly at Tracy, who went back to blushing.

"Oh, God. At least let me leave the room, mom!" Tracy rose, taking the tray with the coffee pot and fleeing into the kitchen to refill it and to organize a light lunch.

"I liked her," Vince said as he drove them back into D.C. several hours later. "You look like her," he added, glancing at Tracy. "Actually, she looked better than I figured she would from the way you said things were going," he observed.

"She was having a good day today, and she's always been a great hostess. Besides, she thought you were just too dishy for words'." Tracy laughed at his surprise. "Her words, not mine," she told him. "She may be sick, but she isn't dead. Handsome men always appealed to her. God, she could be the biggest flirt."

"How come she never remarried?" Vince was genuinely curious. "I mean, she's as pretty as her daughter, so someone must have noticed."

"Oooooh, mom was right, you _are_ a charmer! I'm gonna tell her what you just said," she told him. "It'll make her day." Her smiled faded as she answered the original question. "I guess she just never got over my father," she said. "I never really understood it myself, until now," she added quietly, staring out of the car window, suddenly saddened by the realization that the bond between her parents had been every bit as strong as what she had come to feel for Vince. She felt Vinnie's fingers twine with her own. She suspected that the love she felt for this man would transcend his death, or hers, as her mother's had for her father.

When they pulled up in front of Tracy's building, they were met by a courier van. Tracy signed for and took possession of the good-sized box, grunting under its' weight, grateful when Vince took it away from her and carried it upstairs.

"So what is this?" Vince asked, putting the box on her dining table.

"Probably the files the Attorney General told me she was sending over," Tracy replied, opening the box.

"What files?"

"All your case files," Tracy told him.

Vince went still. "What?"

"She suggested I get to know the men I would be spending the foreseeable future' with. Good and bad. This should be copies of your case files and copies of the tapes of the Isle Pavot hearings. I have homework, love. I guess it's a good thing you have to go back tonight."

"Tracy, you can't leave these lying around here," Vinnie said quietly, his anxiety evident. "If anyone goes through your apartment and finds this -" he waved at the box, "we are _screwed_." 

Tracy looked at him cynically. "Oh, really? Gee, I thought I would just take out an ad in the Post!" Exasperated, she put her hands on her hips. "It may surprise you to know that every once in awhile in the course of my career, I have had possession of highly sensitive and confidential papers or evidence. That is why there is a safe installed in my closet floor, Vinnie. A big, heavy motherfucker that you'd have to open with dynamite if you don't have the combination." She saw the tension in him relax slowly as he acknowledged her statement.

"Okay, I'm sorry. I just have to get used to working with other people — and giving them credit for knowing what they're doing," he admitted dryly. "Ten years solo has made me a little paranoid."

"I consider it a survival skill," Tracy told him. "But, at least when evidence is involved, I think you can trust me to know how to protect it."

He nodded.

"But you have my permission to let me know — nicely — when I'm about to make some other undercover _faux paux_," she grinned at him, taking the sting out of her rebuke.

He laughed, pulling her against him for a hug. "_I_ don't think it's such a good thing that I have to leave," he told her, ruefully.

Tracy spent what little free time she had that week going through Vince's files. The Attorney General had been wise to alert her to the things that weren't said. The really interesting parts of Vince's work definitely lay between the lines. She skimmed the whole set of documents, getting a fairly clear vision of what his life had been like over the last ten years, not envying him the lonely isolation of his work. Then she went back to the beginning, going in detail through the records of his work inside her uncle's organization with absolute fascination. Though the wording of the reports was restrained, it was clear to her, especially knowing him intimately, the lengths Vince had gone too to protect Sonny. His affection for her uncle lay like a vein of gold throughout the reports. She closed the cover on it, after reading the brief description of Sonny's death, and the addenda McPike had filed concerning it, and the toll it had taken on Vince. It had been months before his insertion into his next assignment, months of counseling and effort on the parts of Vince's supervisors. 

She picked up the next file, opening it to find Roger's name in it. She read into the early morning hours, both fascinated and revolted by Vince's life with the Profitts. Apart from Roger's role in getting Vince into their organization, Lococco's activities were secondary to the vast network of drug and arms deals that the Profitts ran, figuring primarily in little forays into mayhem for Mel. Until Mel's arms deals began to dry up. Vince's casual mention of Roger's role in introducing Mel and Susan to the idea of buying into the bank of Isle Pavot began to assume more sinister overtones as she read on, knowing, to some extent how this story ended. 

It was also clear from what lay between these lines that Vince's relationship with Susan had been as far from platonic as Susan's relationship with her brother had been. He seemed to fall into some emotional tie with one or the other of his targets as a matter of course. She wondered if that was part of made him spectacularly successful — that propensity for emotional vulnerability. She didn't doubt that his feelings for these people had been every bit as real as those he had for her, but she wondered at his willingness to risk that pain, with people he _knew_, as a man and as a policeman, were morally corrupt.

She read on, vicariously experiencing the Profitt's meltdown, and the bizarreness of the occult connections to some voodoo-like religion that had ultimately served to undo Mel. Again, she read into the silences between the lines of Vinnie's attempt to protect Susan Profitt from the consequences of her actions in euthanizing her brother, until it became clear that she had descended into madness. 

By that time, it had become evident that Lococco's agenda went far beyond the Profitts, and his identity as a government agent had become known to Vince. Vince's investigative abilities had led him to Roger on the eve of the aborted invasion, and when Lococco had held McPike hostage to insure Vince's uninvolvement, Vince had confronted him with Ketcher's treachery. It was then that she realized that Roger's housekeeper had been Preet, the woman who had been the only one to find a way past Lococco's formidable defenses to his heart. Ketcher's role in her murder made Tracy's heart ache with that unexpected — and unwanted — empathy for Roger that kept creeping past her _own_ defenses, and she found herself wondering how Roger had borne the knowledge of the depths to which he had been betrayed.

She tabled her reading, moved inexplicably to watch the hours of testimony on the Isle Pavot hearings. It formed the backdrop of her evenings for the majority of the rest of the week, a scrim through which the more mundane things like preparing and eating her meals, straightening her apartment, dressing, undressing, all assumed an unreality as seen through the filter of the CIA's deep machinations. She was struck, not for the first time, by the overwhelming urge to participate in some act of civil disobedience in protest at these actions. Iran-Contra and the gulf war had actually precipitated her involvement in organized and peaceful protests. It was still her unshakable belief that Reagan should have been impeached for his actions regarding the hostages in Iran. It was a measure of the warped priorities of the nation that a president could — and apparently would — be impeached for sexual misconduct. But the chief of state who had perpetuated a bloody civil war in Central America to provide a route through which U.S. military hardware could be dispersed to a nation engaged in acts of terrorist warfare against America was enshrined in history as a hero and a statesman.

Her immersion in the hearings was total, but peripheral, until Roger was sworn in. She sat in front of her television for the whole six hours of his first day of testimony, mesmerized by this glimpse of the man he had been ten years before. He had been striking, as deadly and polished as an edged weapon, with the bones of his face jutting against his skin like razors. He was gaunt with the desolation of the collapse of a lifetime of beliefs, of the betrayal by his commanders, and most clearly, by his _own_ betrayal of the country he had thought only to serve.

The pain in his body language had been unmistakable, and its' imprint was clear in the lines that were beginning, then, to appear around eyes and mouth. It was still there, even now, ten years later, etched more deeply. She knew, suddenly, that this was what she had seen into the depths of, on the several occasions she had looked straight into his eyes in an unguarded moment. That his pain should cause _her_ pain in answer unnerved her, and she switched off the TV, getting into her bed, emotions in turmoil. 

Her dreams were uneasy, laced with Roger, then and now. He moved through her unconscious mind like a wraith, his touch on her dreaming thoughts gentle, his long disillusionment and it's pain trailing him like an ethereal battle standard, a banner of suffering endured. When she woke, it was with a sense of mourning for Lococco, the principled young man who had been sacrificed on the bloody altar of National expediency. There was a tightness in her chest like immanent tears as she left for work, unable to shake the feeling of loss.

She watched the final day of his testimony that night, once again uncomfortably moved by sorrow for him as he faced down Senator Getzloff, accepting responsibility for his actions as an assassin, and for the evils done in the name of Democracy. When he was asked why he had agreed to come forward without any guarantee of immunity, the answer had been wrenching:

"I've left a lot of friends lying under crosses all over this globe, Senator. I'm here, because they _can't_ be."

The liquid glint in his eyes had been no trick of lighting, Tracy knew. He truly grieved for what he and the men he had worked with, fought beside, had lost. It was only skill and circumstance that had left him standing when so many of his associates had fallen.

He had been dismissed, his departure interrupted by Herb Ketcher's rough hand on his arm. The words exchanged were not audible, but the anger, even hatred, in Roger's face had been unmistakable. The following days' testimony included Vinnie's, his voice distorted electronically from the secured room in which he testified. He, too had faced down Senator Getzloff, challenging her rush to judgement, admitting his own losses of perspective in the pursuit of principle, forcing her to confront her own. Tracy's heart ached with pride in him. These, his first two assignments, were clearly the origin of his preference, his need, for truth. When he had stated, in his closing statement, his belief that Roger had died redeemed, a hero, she had felt the tears suppressed for two days slide down her face. It astonished her that events ten years old could move her to this degree.

Tracy's dreams were once again disturbed by Roger's presence in them, the sadness he left behind him carrying into her waking world. She spent the day distracted by thoughts of him, that mere fact triggering the anxiety he tended to evoke in her. She forced herself to examine _why_, wondering at the fear meeting his eyes, in those rare instances when neither of them were prepared for it, always left her feeling. It was as though she were witnessing, or rather, committing, a rape. In those moments, everything he was, was laid out before her, without defenses, without justification. He was, she realized uncomfortably, completely vulnerable in those split seconds. It was like pulling a hermit crab out of its' shell. Lococco was clearly intensely introverted, a loner who had learned, to his bitter cost, to trust no one. To see him exposed like that was as excruciating for her as it was for him. And yet it was something neither of them seemed to be able to control.

"He was _totally_ screwed, wasn't he?" Tracy said to Vince that weekend, when she and Vince discussed Roger.

Vinnie nodded. "He knew it, going in, and he did it anyway. He's never lacked for guts," he told her, referring to Lococco's testimony before the Senate Investigating Committee. "That was partly why he staged his death. There's not much point in indicting a dead man."

"I don't suppose we could work on getting his record cleared?" Tracy sighed, knowing the odds were long.

"I guess you could talk to your friend, the Attorney General," Vince said, only half-serious, "but I'm not sure what she could do without dragging the whole thing up again."

She sighed unhappily. "I feel this guilt for what he went through. Like I need to do something to make it right." She looked up at Vince with a wistful smile. "Just call me codependent." 

He smiled gently back. "Compassion doesn't make you codependent, Trace, it makes you human." He pulled her into an embrace, resting his chin on the top of her head. "Now you see why I try and protect him, when I can. He's been hurt too badly and too often for me to want to see him go through it again." He paused, knowing he needed to press the discussion on to what she felt for Lococco. "He's falling for you, you know," he told her quietly.

Tracy laughed shortly. "Oh, please," she said into his chest. "All I get from him is condescension and contempt. He thinks I'm a huge liability to you, Vince. And he's every bit as jealous of me as I am of him."

"That's what I don't get," Vince admitted. "Neither of you have any reason to feel that way."

"Vinnie, my love, we have _every_ reason to feel that way. We are both in the position of knowing that someone else out there means as much to you as we do. And we're both selfish enough to resent the hell out of it. I can't even begin to tell you how it makes me feel when the two of you go into one of your huddles. I might as well be on the moon for all the difference it makes to you that I'm there."

"For whatever it's worth, Trace, he feels exactly the same way whenever you're in town, like he can't get my attention to save his life." Vince sighed again, not knowing how to convince either of these people his feelings for them were immutable, grounded in the same sort of trust, the same sense of kindred spirits. "I want the two of you to be friends, Tracy. To know that you can trust each other the way I trust the two of you. Don't ask me choose between you," he told her, hurting, for himself as well as for her.

"I'm not that stupid, Vince," she said in a small voice, looking up at him. "I'm afraid if I did, you wouldn't choose me." 

That admission, he knew intuitively, was at the root of the problem, for both Roger and Tracy. "I don't want a life where I have to decide between my best friend and my wife," he said. "I love you both and I won't lose either of you. Tracy, I need you to find a way to work with him. I know he can be a total asshole, but it's usually when he's hurting. And you make him hurt, babe. I don't know why, or how, but you do. And he's about half a step from falling for you every bit as hard as I did. Whatever it is you do to him when you look at him rips him open like I've never seen." He felt her shiver involuntarily.

"Sometimes, when I catch his eye accidentally, it's like I can see all the way through him, see everything he is. God, it's frightening to stumble around in someone's soul like that," she told him, not knowing how to describe the experience. "Roger scares me. And when he's not scaring me, he makes me so mad I want to kill him."

"Well," Vince chuckled, "you're not alone there. I think just about everyone who ever meets him has the same reaction to him, at least until they get to know him. Ask Frank sometime. God knows, he scared the shit out of me, when we were under in Mel's loony-bin. But if he's working with you, he'll never betray you. Ever. I think you know why. You may not always agree with the way he does things, but chances are, he'll be right about the logic. Don't underestimate his intelligence, Tracy. Don't underestimate _him_."

"Vince, I've spent every waking moment I wasn't at work this week immersing myself in his history. That he walked away from the Company knowing it could cost him his life, and that he's survived in spite of all the efforts they've made to kill him, make me damned sure I'll be giving him the benefit of the doubt. I have every faith in his intelligence. And his survival skills," she said emphatically.

ÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅ

Having bowed to necessity, Vince and Tracy spent the next several weekends with Roger and a battalion of realtors, looking for a house suitable to its' role as both fortress and castle. On Long Island, they finally found something they could agree on. It was a large, U'-shaped house, spared from mansion status only by the slightly down-trodden quality it had. Situated on almost twenty securely fenced acres, it had been built in the early part of the century, its' ceilings high and ornamented with elaborate moldings. It was crammed with architectural detailing of the period, mahogany paneling making up the ground floor wainscoting and lining the walls of the library. While the bathrooms had been recently — and lavishly — renovated, the kitchen was archaic. This actually produced the first small concordance between Tracy and Roger, as they had discussed possibilities for its' overhaul.

Despite the peeling paint and overgrown landscaping, the structure was sound and the electrical and plumbing systems were all up to modern code. The two arms of the U' housed the bedrooms, all of which were generously sized, most with en suite baths. The upper floor of the north wing held a pair of suites across a hall from each other. The larger of the two was made up of a master bedroom and bath, complete with a huge dressing room lined with vast closets, a good-sized library, and a second bedroom. All three rooms had beautiful views of the sparse woodland between the house and the Long Island Sound. The second suite, smaller, was on the inside of the of the U', and consisted of a pair of spacious bedrooms and a voluptuous bathroom, complete with a Jacuzzi the size of a small swimming pool and an Art Nouveau stained glass window that made Tracy drool.

The front of the house, making up the bottom of the U', had two-story ceilings in all the public rooms, which consisted of a huge livingroom, diningroom, parlor and the main library which opened off the spectacular foyer with its' matched set of grand staircases at either end. These led to the upper floors of the two wings, a gallery-like balcony connecting the two wings, large casement windows looking out onto the courtyard. Under the massive, curving, staircases was a solarium with skylights and a wall of French doors that opened out onto the courtyard enclosed by the wings of the building.

The ground floor of the north wing housed the kitchen with its' butler's pantry, a utility room, and laundry on one side of the central hallway, and a servant's bed and bath, a storage pantry and a half bath under the north stairs. The southern wing was bedrooms on both floors. The lower floor had four bedrooms, all of which had French doors opening out onto the landscape, three of them with attached baths, along with an elaborate half bath under the south stairs, clearly for the use of visitors. The upper floor also held four bedrooms, each with their own bath. The two bedrooms at the end of the wing shared a wall, with a connecting door.

The courtyard between the wings of the U' was flagstone, much of which was in need of resetting, with an impossibly over-grown kitchen garden off the pantry. The built-in out-door grill with its' wood-burning brick oven was the clincher for both Lococco and Tracy, who had grown fond of the West Coast tendency to cook outdoors.

Its' size, not to mention its' price tag, made Vince cringe. But the fact that Tracy and Roger both agreed on it made him give in on its' selection as his future home. Since it had been on the market for an extended time, and was clearly in need of at least cosmetic work, Lococco was able to wangle a price reduction, once he had informed the realtor that he would be paying for it with a bank draft, in full. 

The realtor and Roger both got on their cell phones, Roger making arrangements to transfer the cash once the realtor had contacted the flabbergasted owner to make the offer. Vince drove them back to the city as Roger contacted contractors and maintenance companies by cell. By the time they reached Brooklyn, Lococco had secured the immediate and undivided attention of the army of laborers that would be needed to make the house livable in the time span he wanted. He left Vince and Tracy at Vinnie's tiny house, promising to fax Tracy kitchen plans later in the week. They spent the rest of their Sunday evening as they preferred, in bed, Tracy catching the eleven p.m. shuttle to D.C. with as much reluctance as ever. Even the knowledge that the following weekend was the beginning of Georgetown's spring break didn't make it any easier to leave.

Vince and Roger spent the week flying out to Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia and Chicago to meet with the dons there, and to try and collect any information the Consiglieri might have on the failed deals with rival outfits. Again, there was nothing concrete, nothing that pointed in a single direction, merely a series of situations where better offers had triggered the collapse of deals of a wide range of types, with a wide range of rival underworld groups. But the fact that there was even a single similarity among them all succeeded in making the Families extraordinarily nervous.

Torricelli of Chicago, whom both Vince and Roger had taken a liking to almost immediately, reiterated his suggestion that they recruit a few of his men until they had put together their own organization. Roger agreed, talking to Torricelli's chief of security and getting a list of names of likely candidates. By the time they had left Chicago, they had a pair of Torricelli's head-bangers scheduled to take up residence in the Long Island house to supervise the work crews during the hurried remodel. Both men had been in the construction trades and knew what was involved in the type of project the house represented.

Their flight in from Philadelphia arrived back at La Guardia half an hour before Tracy's D.C. shuttle flight was due, so they elected to wait for her. Vince met her at the gate while Roger was rounding up a rental car big enough to hold all three of them and their luggage.

Vince drove while Roger and Tracy wrangled over their dream kitchen. Vinnie listened with the hope that this signaled the beginning of a tentative truce between the two. They spent the week variously, finalizing the blueprints for the kitchen and shuttling out to Long Island to check on the progress being made. 

Even a week had made a tremendous difference, Vince was forced to concede. The exterior had been cleaned and painted the palest of butter yellows, the gingerbread and moldings picked out in white with touches of gold leaf, thirty or so years of ivy having been pulled off the siding and the damage repaired. The construction vehicles had churned the scruffy front lawn into a quagmire and they picked their way through the mud along the front of the house, watching the work crew as they removed section after section of windows and French doors.

"So what's with the windows?" Vince asked as they walked around to the side of the north wing, watching as a crew worked on the replacing the big casements of the master suite.

In answer, Roger reached into a coat pocket and withdrew a ball bearing. "I don't like surprises," he reminded Vince. "And sniper fire is one we can do something about," he added, as he flicked the steel globe at the top-most of the new windows that were stacked against the wall of the house. It bounced off with a whine. Tracy moved forward to examine the pane the bearing had hit, then turned her head to look at Lococco in astonishment. 

"Bulletproof?" she asked.

Roger nodded. "This whole side of the house is vulnerable to a shooter out on the sound. And since it's gonna be where you and Vince are stashed for the moment, I don't want anything happening to you, not that I can prevent." He tossed another bearing in his gloved hand, then hurled it through the pane of one of the old windows that a pair of workers were carrying away. The unexpected, and noisy, shattering of the glass startled them into dropping the heavy window, amid snarled curses.

"That wasn't necessary," Tracy chastised Roger. "You'd made your point."

Roger shrugged disinterestedly.

Progress had been made inside, as well. The old kitchen had been gutted in preparation for new construction. Though the painters had not yet started on the interior, the prep work was well under way. The walls and wood work had been thoroughly scrubbed down and the varnish on the mahogany wainscoting had been stripped. The extensive wood work in the front rooms had been likewise treated, and Tracy turned to Roger with concern. "You're not planning on painting all this woodwork, are you?" she asked.

"You kidding me?" Roger laughed. "It's solid Honduras mahogany, sweet thing. It's gonna be sanded and re-varnished."

Tracy's relief at this piece of news almost outweighed her annoyance at Roger's use of his slang short-hand for brainless female'. She settled for a glare in his direction, then wandered off down the hallway of the south wing's ground floor, poking her head into each of the bedrooms to see what, if anything, had happened there.

Roger and Vince followed her, talking quietly together, as she completed her tour of the ground floor. She led the way upstairs to the master suite, watching the window-replacement activity from the doorway of the library for several minutes.

"If you have any particular notions about color schemes or that sort of thing, you'd better make some decisions. They'll be starting to paint the week after next," Roger informed her from where he leaned against the hall wall, watching her watch the workers.

Tracy tried to ignore the flicker of speculative interest in his eyes, suddenly aware of his physical presence and her own response to it. She saw his acknowledgement of her wariness in the sudden blankness of his expression. His eyes focused on some unseen thing over her left shoulder.

"If it matters to you, you'd better make arrangements for furnishing the place," he told her. "Otherwise I'll bring in some decorator."

"Don't you dare," she told him. "Just give me a budget and your preferences, and I'll take it from there. I just hope you don't like Bauhaus."

"No soul," he replied with a faint smile. "Suit yourself, sweet thing. Sky's the limit. Just try and keep the frills to a minimum."

She turned to take Vinnie's hand as she started down the hall to the top of the stairs. She paused at the top landing to glance back poisonously at Roger. "The next time you call me that, I'm going to give serious thought to neutering you," she warned him.

Roger's laugh echoed through the foyer as he followed the couple downstairs.

The rest of March and April found Tracy completely occupied with the details of decorating thirteen bedrooms and the assorted common rooms. She kept firmly in mind that she would likely be the sole female in an ocean of testosterone, and made her purchases accordingly. The ground floor of the south wing she kept simple but comfortable, assuming that that would be where the majority of the hired hands would be residing. Good-quality reproductions in a style that coexisted comfortably with the period of the house made up the bulk of the furnishings. Each bedroom was outfitted with a king sized bed, an arm chair, desk and bookcases and area rugs, with an armoire to stash TVs and stereos. She kept the colors and textures in a masculine palette of neutrals and jewel tones, using leather as her choice of upholstery.

In the upstairs bedrooms of the south wing, she elected for more elaborate touches, still careful to keep it masculine for the most part. She was reminded of the sets of PBS series like Masterpiece Theater, as she strove for the Thirties Gentlemen's Club atmosphere. Only one of the bedrooms was aimed at a more feminine occupant, with padded silk walls of sea green, and bullion fringe in German silver on the matching drapes and valances. Since the woodwork in that room had been painted out at some point in the past, she had no qualms about having it repainted in a pale green that looked almost white next to the silk.

The servant's rooms she indulged in feminizing, ensuring that it was considerably more comfortably home-like than the more generic hotel décor of the goon wing, as she had come to think of it. Whoever it was who was going to be saddled with the care and feeding of a household full of men deserved a refuge as comfortable as she could make it.

While she made color decisions for the public rooms as well as for the two suites in the upstairs master wing, she left off furnishing them completely. Instead, she opted for bringing her mother with her to estate sales where she was able to find an assortment of antiques that served as the foundation for those rooms. Her mother entered into the spirit of the thing willingly, and Tracy was overjoyed to see some of the ravages of her illness ease from her features. Her mother had even taking to defending Roger and his single-minded obsession with the kitchen remodel, siding with him in his preference for stainless steel. "It's so much easier to keep clean, darling," Rita told her. "And since it sounds like Vince and his partner plan on doing a lot of entertaining, it will make life a _lot_ easier on whoever's doing the cooking. Or rather, the cleaning up."

When she arrived in New York Friday evenings, it had become ritual to appear for dinner at Rudy's. It was there that she first experienced Roger's skills as a chef. One Friday afternoon, at loose ends, he had argued his way into Rudy's kitchen after having found the local farmer's market, and proceeded to assemble an astonishing meal, easily the equal of any she had had at expensive restaurants anywhere in the country. It was then that she sampled the wine from his vineyards, as well. Having lived for nearly ten years on the West Coast, she knew a superior California wine when she tasted it. Her complements were genuine, and effusive enough to make him visibly uncomfortable.

Aiuppo had taken to attempting to interest her in the details of the wedding under the guise of asking her preferences concerning the choice among several venues, and by asking her how her search for a dress was progressing. She told him, honestly, that she hadn't given it any thought, and that she expected to find something off the rack that would suit the occasion, relishing his obvious annoyance.

She had not counted on his intervening in the process. When she arrived home from work the following Tuesday evening, she was met at her door by a seamstress who had orders not to leave until a dress had been decided on and measurements taken. Furious, she had not made it easy on the poor woman, for which she later apologized. Forced to make a decision, she turned up her nose at the lacy confections that the woman tried to convince her were all the rage, selecting instead a dress that was fashioned in the vein of a Vera Wang creation. It was the soul of simplicity, sleekly fitted through the bodice and long sleeved, with hundreds of tiny fabric-covered buttons up the sleeves from wrist to elbow and back from hem to neckline the only ornamentation. The skirt was slim, flaring out only below the knee, walking made possible by the daring slash up one side to mid thigh. If she elected to wear a garter, it would be visible with every step. Its' train was minimal, suiting her fine. The neckline in front was coy, virginally high against the collarbone, then plunged in a narrow V' to mid-back behind. It was a delightfully contradictory dress, both modest and revealing. She hoped Rudy hated it. And she equally hoped Vinnie loved it.

Two days later the woman was back with a muslin rough draft, and yards of fabric among which to choose for the final version. She stood on a chair in her livingroom as the woman tugged, tucked, pinned, marked, and otherwise adjusted the dress, for the first time her impending marriage assuming some sort of reality. Her stomach fluttered with butterflies and her palms sweated as she turned on her chair at the seamstress's instruction. The fit of nerves was mercifully short-lived, but she vowed to ask Vince if he had any second thoughts. She chose the material for both dress and veil, not caring about the cost, since Rudy had agreed to pay for whatever she wanted. She allowed herself to indulge in her fondness for fine fabrics, and selected silk for both garments. The dress would be an ivory satin silk, heavy, luxurious in its' hand, and the veil was a nearly transparent organza, also of ivory, shot through with threads of gold. The metallic thread lent it enough body that it wouldn't simply lay against her back limply, but not so much that it resembled traditional tulle. She made a mental note to tell Rudy that her color scheme would be ivory and gold, the veil fabric having made that an obvious choice.

The following weekend, Vince insisted on taking her shopping. He didn't say what for, but it became immediately obvious when he herded her into Tiffany's. He had already clearly made contact with the manager, because they were escorted to a private room and waited on hand and foot for the better part of three hours as they were shown the full range of settings, followed by stones. Tracy had very quickly nixed the idea of some ten-carat diamond monstrosity, and the perceptive sales person quickly realized her style preferences leaned to the old fashioned, rather than the modern. Eventually, she selected a sapphire center stone of unbelievable color about the size of a large pea, because it reminded her of Vince's eyes. The setting had an almost Victorian quality, and the paired wedding bands that went with it — one on either side of the sapphire ring — amplified that impression, with their rose cut diamonds. 

She refused to leave before Vince had selected a wedding band, which, reluctantly, he did. When they finally walked back out into the brisk April day, it was late afternoon. He informed her that they were meeting Roger for dinner at the Waldorf at six, so finding a way to kill the next two hours was up to her. Her annoyance at his cavalier dinner arrangements did not stop her from letting him know _exactly_ how she planned on killing the time. She flagged down a cab and told the driver where she wanted to go, then set about seducing her fiancée in the back seat.

The cabby dropped them at the Waldorf to Vince's bemusement. It was not until Tracy approached the concierge's desk that he realized she intended to book a room. "We don't have any luggage," he reminded her softly, as she took her key card and smiled brilliantly at the desk clerk.

"For what I have in mind, luggage is _not_ necessary," she informed him, stroking the inside of his wrist teasingly, amused when a faint flush colored his cheekbones. 

She was right, Vince thought an hour later, stretching and then running hands through his hair, luxuriating in an afternoon spent with this woman. Especially when it ended in bed, with their bodies sweaty and satiated. 

"We're going to be late for dinner," Tracy said, stirring against him provocatively. 

So much for satiation, Vince thought as his body responded. "Too bad," he said. "Food isn't what I'm hungry for," he told her, stroking her intimately, feeling the wet heat that met his touch.

She sighed, kissing his throat delicately. "I've got the hors d' oeuvre of my dreams," she told him. "Whet my appetite."

He did so, and proceeded to satisfy the appetite he had aroused, and his own into the bargain. When they finally left their room they were fifteen minutes late for their dinner date with Roger. 

Lococco eyed his watch and as a consequence, missed their entrance into the lobby from the elevators. His first awareness of them was when Vince touched his arm lightly. Roger stifled the startled jump of muscles as he turned to glare at them.

"Sorry we're late," Vince said, not looking sorry in the least.

"Uh huh," he said sarcastically, eyeing Tracy askance. Both of them had the relaxed and besotted air that told him fairly clearly what they had been doing that afternoon. He tried unsuccessfully to squelch his own response to the pheromones or whatever it was the pair emitted that invariably roused his libido. Even two and a half months had not acclimatized him to Tracy Steelgrave. He had learned how to avoid her direct gaze, sparing himself any number of soul-destroying looks, but he had not yet found a way to eliminate his physical sense of her. If anything, it was getting worse. Even the series of bedmates that had warmed his sheets in the last months did nothing to eliminate the erotic dreams that disturbed his nights. Preet's presence there was fading, replaced — unmistakably — by a fantasy that bore Tracy's face and form. That very fact worried him. Preet had been the emotional bedrock of his life for almost thirty years. Even her death had not ended that role. To have her place in his dreams usurped angered him almost as much as it unnerved him.

And to have Tracy flicker before his eyes in waking dreams nearly as erotic as his sleeping ones left him in a state of perpetual sexual arousal. It was no longer even limited to days she was actually in the same city he was. She haunted him twenty four/seven.

"Where are we going for dinner?" Tracy asked, interrupting his irritable musing.

"A friend of mine has a place he's been bugging me to check out," Roger said. "He's been trying to get my investment group to back him in California. I figure it could be our first joint venture, so you'd better come along and see what you think."

This was the sum total of what they could get from him, his refusal to answer Tracy's questions with anything more than a you'll see when we get there' making her as irritable as he was. Perversely, the worse her mood became, the better his grew. When he drove into the parking garage of the World Trade Center buildings, he was grinning. He got them into the elevator and up to the 107th floor, leading them into the restaurant with its' spectacular views of New York. 

Tracy's pique evidently forgotten, she looked around with curiosity as Roger approached the maitre d. A whispered conversation got them escorted to a private dining room with views of the entire skyline of Manhattan and an open bar from which the waitperson procured the cocktails of their choice. Within minutes, a slightly chunky man in chef's togs entered, making straight for Roger.

"Hey, Lococco! I'd just about given up on getting you to take me seriously," he said, shaking Roger's hand with a warm smile. "Welcome to Windows on the World," he gestured around the room.

"Aptly named," Roger grinned back. "Michael, I'd like you to meet Vince Terranova, and his fiancée, Tracy Steelgrave, my business partners. Vince, Tracy, this is Michael Lomonaco, the chef here."

Tracy shook his hand first. "I ate at Club 21 while you were there," she told him with a smile of her own.

Vince shook hands politely, letting Roger and Tracy carry the conversation. Haut cuisine was not his area of expertise, though he had no doubt that would change if this assignment lasted long enough. Tracy was clearly as much a foodie as Roger was. Polite chit-chat gave way before the arrival of the food, an eight-course tasting menu that Lomonaco assured them would give them an overview of his restaurants' menu and style.

The chef returned intermittently to ensure things were progressing smoothly, but otherwise left them to make their judgements in peace. Tracy's opinion, one with which Vince agreed, was that Roger's meal of several weeks before had been more memorable, it's flavors crisper, less muddled, and ultimately more satisfying. Tracy voiced the conjecture that perhaps it was the fact that the ingredients Roger had used had simply been fresher, siting his trip to the farmer's market.

Lococco, flattered in spite of himself, took this critique seriously, agreeing with it, to a certain extent, though he pointed out that his and Lomonaco's styles were markedly different.

"I don't think it's a question of style," Tracy argued. "It has more to do with ingredients. The better they are, the better the food."

She argued the point that the availability of produce and artisanal foods was increasing, and that it was silly not to avail oneself of it in a state as well-endowed as New York was.

Vince listened to the discussion, slowly relaxing into the rhythms of their discussion, hoped that nothing would trigger the increasingly sharp-tongued squabbles the two were prone to.

The evening passed amicably, unusual for one spent in both their company. Roger's temper, always short, had been rapidly approaching hair-trigger, especially when in Tracy's presence. Vince had been only partially successful in getting Lococco to talk about it. Only when he had pointed out that it was obvious to him how strongly drawn Roger was to Tracy had he been able to get Lococco to confront the issue, and at least admit that frustrated sexual attraction formed a part of what was going on in his antipathy for her. He had related Tracy's admission of fear that if forced to choose, Vince might not pick her, and was gratified to see the flash of empathy in Lococco's eyes, confirming his impression that another facet of Lococco's difficulty lay in the same insecurity.

Roger's body language was more relaxed than he had seen it in days, and never had it been this fluid with Tracy in the room. When the two of them managed to ignore the tensions between them long enough to enter into a conversation about something that interested both of them, it was clear that they enjoyed sharpening their considerable wits on each other. He readily admitted that he was the dim bulb in their company, often at a loss when the esoterica of their vast interests were discussed. Subjects that Lococco would have stumped him with were fodder for frequently heated discussions when broached in Tracy's vicinity. Intellectually, Roger was far more Tracy's equal than he. He supposed it was fortunate that most of the time it didn't bother him. And it certainly didn't seem to bother Tracy.

It wasn't as if he couldn't enter into one of their more philosophical discussions, but he simply didn't have the breadth of their backgrounds. It was a handicap when they began quoting from assorted experts on the topic of conversation, whether chaos theory or restaurants. He was occasionally left with the feeling that he should consider going back to school.

Roger drove them back to the Waldorf near midnight, startled when they entered the hotel on his heels. He cast Vince an inquiring scowl, catching the faintly sheepish look on Terranova's face.

"It's too late to drive all the way back into Brooklyn, especially after three bottles of wine," Vince pointed out. "Besides, we've already booked the room."

Roger rode up the elevator with them, relieved when they got out on the sixteenth floor, leaving him musing silently the rest of the way to the twenty seventh. The tension that had uncharacteristically ebbed earlier in the evening was back full-force, and he made himself ask why. He came to the unwelcome conclusion that the knowledge that they would likely be making love inside a ten mile radius of him was what had his nerves twinging and his body hard as it had, for once, _not_ been all evening.

Sleep was a long time coming, even the fall-back position of the ritual meditation he used to relax not working in the slightest. He had considered patrolling the bar for female company, but couldn't manage enough interest in a body other than Tracy Steelgrave's to make it worth the hassle. Hers, on the other hand, interested him far too much for comfort. He knew she would move through his unconscious mind with her usual tantalizing presence, leaving him with lust unsatisfied, body and mind aching for her touch in the waking world.

But that night, the dream was subtly different, Preet and Tracy intermingling surreally in his subconscious. Instead of the simple, if intense, eroticism of the usual dream, it assumed complexities of emotion that colored the sexual aspects with the patina of his long bond with Preet. The women held him, sheltering him in their arms from the grief of remembered deeds, and as he filled them, shifting from one persona to another, sometimes one and the same, as though both sets of eyes met his own, overlaid one on the other like aspects of a goddess. Mother, maiden, crone.

It was the maiden's aspect that lay with him as he woke, though his arms were as empty as they had been when he had first descended into sleep. Yet he carried her in the center of his being, even waking, not sure whether it was Preet or Tracy who resided there. Feeling oddly comforted at her presence within him, he slept again, this time dreamlessly.

Rudy handed Tracy the guest list, the responses checked off according to whether the person would be attending or not. She glanced at it, briefly, without any particular interest, and handed it back. "Well, it looks like the gangland who's who'," she told him, dryly. "So everyone could agree on the thirteenth of June, huh?" 

Aiuppo ignored the cynical tone, nodding. "The Mayfair resort could accommodate both the date and the number of expected guests, so that is the location. Chero and Torricelli are handling security with Ruggiero," he informed Vince, who sat next to Tracy on the sofa in Rudy's library, his arms around her as she leaned back against his chest, comfortably. 

"Roger's ancestry is more Irish than Italian," Vince reminded the old don. "Why do you keep calling him Ruggiero'?"

"Lococco' is as Italian as your name or mine, Vincenzo. Indulge an old man. It makes him family."

"He doesn't need a name in pidgin Italian to make him family," Vince pointed out wryly. "He just _is_ family, Italian accent or not."

Aiuppo simply shrugged, the gesture the age-old precursor to the new teen mantra, whatever'. "The florist and the caterers have been confirmed. How is your dress coming?" he turned to Tracy.

"Fine. Louisa is coming Monday night after I get off work to do what I hope is the final fitting. Which, if the wedding is two weeks from today, I guess is none too soon. The only thing left to do is get Roger and Vince fitted for their tuxes." Tracy turned her head to plant a light kiss at the angle of Vinnie's jaw. "I'm looking forward to that. I love men in black tie. What time is the ceremony?" 

"The wedding itself will be at five. Antipasti and champagne in the courtyard at six, and then diner and dancing in the ballroom afterward. The rehearsal will be Friday evening." Rudy leaned back into his chair, wearily. The organizing of a wedding had proved uncomfortably similar to organizing a war. Troops to be recruited, trained and put in place, supply lines to be established, battlefields to be decided on. It served to confirm his long-held belief that women's organizational skills were hopelessly under appreciated.

He was looking forward to seeing these two wed. Not simply for their sake, but for his own as well. A full and uninterrupted night's sleep would be welcome indeed. "I am sending Luigi out to your house, and Chero is sending Donatello. You need local men, not Torrecelli's carpetbaggers." He changed the subject, expecting at least token resistance to this pronouncement.

Vince shrugged. "It's not like we don't have the room, and everything is pretty well finished out there. The furniture gets delivered this weekend, so it shouldn't be a problem. But Paul's men stay, at least till Rog and I can start recruiting our own guys."

Reluctantly, Rudy nodded. "When does Roger return from Miami?"

"Tonight. I'm suppose to meet him at the airport at midnight," Vince informed him, feeling Tracy stir against him.

"Drat the man, anyway. I don't suppose he could possibly have found any _less_ convenient a time to arrive back, could he?" she complained.

"Oh, I don't know, three a.m. sounds even less convenient' to me. It's not like I'm making you come with me, babe. You've got the furniture movers to supervise tomorrow, so you're going to need your sleep," he teased her as he nuzzled her ear.

She growled at him, only half-feigning irritability. "No hanging out at bars scoping out the pretty girls," she warned him.

"There wouldn't be much point," he replied, with a grin, "since the prettiest one in New York will be waiting for me at home," he ducked her mock blow.

"No, Vincenzo, she will not. From now until the wedding, I think it better for Tracy to stay here when she visits the city than at your house. It is improper, before the marriage."

"Oh, give me a break, Rudy," Vince said, annoyed. "Why now, all of a sudden?"

"Tradition says that a man and a woman should come to their marriage bed as virgins. This is impossible, for people who marry so late -"

"I'll say," Vince interrupted.

"But at least they should come to it with longing," the old man continued, ignoring the outburst.

As had become the usual pattern, Vince and Tracy had been unable to sway the old don from his path once he had decided on it. Though both of them were irritated, surviving without making love for two weeks was not an unmanageable feat, merely an unpleasant one.

When he related this turn of events to Roger on their way back from La Guardia, Lococco had laughed. This only served to rub salt in the wounds, and Vince's temper was decidedly frayed.

"Vinnie, you're a schmuck," was Roger's unsympathetic observation. "Just find yourself a ladder and rescue your damsel from the ivory tower Rudy has her stashed in. Or better yet, just ignore the old codger and walk on in and get her. You're bigger than him, lover-boy, in case it slipped your mind. You're letting him get away with a damned site more than you should be, for one of the future dons of America'."

Vince was forced to acknowledge the truth of this, though his reasoning, based on long familiarity with both Catholic mores and mob dogma, was that, technically, the old man was right.

"So who cares if he's right, in his narrow little world view?" Roger asked rhetorically. "You've got a perpetual hard-on for the sweet thing. Why not indulge it?"

"Well, I'm not the only one," Vince snapped. 

Roger laughed again, this time with a hint of bitterness. "Well they say misery loves company, Buckwheat," he replied. "Welcome to the life of the lovelorn."

"There's nothing lovelorn about you, Rog. You're sexually hyperactive!" Vince retorted.

"Welcome to that club, too," Roger said, vengefully.

The day of the wedding dawned as brilliantly clear as cut crystal, one of those rare summer days on the East Coast that held no hint of the cloying mugginess that was the usual pattern. The breeze blew in off the ocean, and the New Jersey resort that Aiuppo had booked for the ceremony and the reception was situated to take full advantage of the spectacular weather.

Tracy, in the unshakable company of her bridesmaid, an awkward girl of maybe twenty five, moved through the day in an increasing fog of anxiety. She had not seen Vince all day, her fiancée clearly recovering from the night of debauchery Lococco had arranged as a bachelor party. Or at least she assumed it had been debauched, given Lococco's insatiable sexual appetite. Her stomach was fluttering, her heartbeat matching it twitch for nervous twitch, as Rosalee, her bridesmaid, rounded up a light lunch for them at about two. Tracy drank the glass of red wine, letting the alcohol relax some of the nervousness out of her muscles and settle her stomach, but could do no more than pick at her meal. She concentrated on drawing out her assigned companion, ascertaining that the girl was some relative of Capuzi's — a granddaughter, she gathered. Rosalee's life story made for more interesting conversation than she had bargained on, as she found herself in the role of confessor for a love affair that the girl's _paterfamilias_ most definitely disapproved of. Hardly in a position to cast stones, Tracy offered what advice she thought good — and reasonable, given the circumstances — and then proceeded to answer the embarrassed inquiry about why she, Rosalee, had been elected bridesmaid.

"It was Rudy's idea," she said, sweeping a hand wide to indicate the scenery. "He wanted Vince to have a big wedding. It's so not like either of us, but what could Vinnie say? Most of my friends are out West, and there wasn't enough time for them to clear their schedules to make it out here on such short notice."

"It must be kind of strange," was Rosalee's tentative observation. "Not really knowing anyone at your own wedding."

"I'll say," Tracy agreed whole-heartedly. "Vince and I have talked about having a civil ceremony in a few months so that our _friends_ can actually come."

"Well, that's good." Rosalee sighed. "I'd just be depressed if I were you, otherwise, no one in the pictures who means anything to you and all. It's just weird."

At four in the afternoon, the hairdresser had finished pulling her hair into an elaborate Gibson girl, studded with miniature golden rosebuds and babies' breath. Rosalee helped her into her dress, then helped the stylist pin the veil into place, letting it drape over the heavy coil of Tracy's hair at the back of her head and flow like water down her back.

"Wow," was Rosalee's genuine praise. "You're a knockout!"

Tracy blushed, both flattered and amused. "I'm not so sure that's a good thing, not on my wedding day."

"Trust me," Rosalee said firmly. "It's _always_ a good thing."

Rudy walked her down the aisle to the strains of whatever music it was he had arranged. Tracy couldn't have said what it was, her heart pounding too loudly in her ears to hear it. Desperately, she focused on Vince, who stood by the altar beside the priest, staring back at her, dumbstruck. The look on his face made her smile, genuinely, and he smiled back, his eyes lighting with obvious pleasure. That, more than anything, settled the violent attack of butterflies. Clearly, he had not changed his mind. He filled her field of vision, the only thing in the assembled gathering that she cared about, gorgeous in his black tie.

Roger, who stood edgily beside Vince, froze, as Tracy Steelgrave — soon to be Terranova — appeared at the head of the aisle. She was stunning. Somehow, it hadn't occurred to him that she would be, having no familiarity with brides on their wedding days. He felt, with his odd sense of her, the nervousness that shivered through her, where she stood on Rudy's arm at the opposite end of the resort's smallish chapel from where he and Vince stood, waiting. And felt it vanish as she locked eyes with Vince. He knew that all else in the room had ceased to exist for either of them, and as he stood beside Terranova, he felt the bitterness of envy. The very idea of envying a man about to marry stuck him as perverse, and he fought the feeling with the same dogged determination that he would have fought any other enemy. Until that moment, the thought of marriage had never entered his mind. Now, faced with a woman who filled his thoughts, his senses as this one did, he encountered a whole new level of jealousy, this time of Vince.

Roger performed his sundry duties as best man, handing off the rings when called upon, and otherwise doing as expected. When the ceremony finally concluded, he offered his elbow to the dark-haired bridesmaid Rudy had assigned Tracy, ignoring her beyond that. His attention was focused on the line of Tracy's spine, where tantalizing glimpses of it could be seen through the translucent fabric of her veil as she and Vince walked out of the chapel ahead of him.

The photographer rounded them up and spent the next hour arranging them to his satisfaction like so many department store mannequins. Roger fought to keep his temper, careful to stay as far from Tracy as he could under the watchful eye of the photographer. Finally, they were given their freedom, and he deserted the bride and groom for the company of Torricelli and his lieutenant, finding refuge in business discussions. He made the rounds over the course of the evening, even the prospect of maintaining a cordial tone with Castaluccio less unnerving than that of Tracy Steelgrave-Terranova's proximity.

"Dance with her, Rog," Vince requested, softly, interrupting Lococco's conversation with one of Maggioncalda's men, as he took Roger's elbow and separated him from the small group.

"Are you kidding me?" Roger snapped, shaking off Vinnie's hand in irritable disbelief. "It's _your_ wedding, Buckwheat!"

"And you're my best man," Vince reminded him. "Just be nice, for a change."

"I don't _want_ to be nice'," was Lococco's retort. What he wanted, with increasing urgency, went far, far beyond being nice'. The woman had a positive genius for triggering a reaction in him. It was his intellect, his wits, his senses, his amusement, his ire and, god knew, his libido, she roused without the slightest effort. What he wanted was to make love to her, long enough, hard enough, to wipe all thoughts of her new husband from her mind. What he _wanted_, was possession.

He had always gravitated to married women, instinctively knowing the likelihood of emotional entanglements was sharply reduced. In this case, though, the emotional entanglement was _his_. His fixation on Tracy Steelgrave was beginning to approach an addiction. He craved her every bit as much as if she were his drug of choice, both unable to handle being in her vicinity and unwilling to be away from her. Thoughts of seducing her flitted through his mind at the oddest, and usually the most inopportune, times, frequently even when she was nowhere about. And yet, for every occasion that that impulse came over him, the knowledge that this was his best friend's woman swept him with equal force. And that was a betrayal he could not allow himself to commit, however much he might wish to. "I'm not a priest, Vinnie," he said grimly. "Don't make me do this. All of us will regret it."

"Rog, it's politics. We've got to make it clear to everyone here that there's no wedge that they can find that'll come between us. Divide and conquer won't work on us."

Roger stared at him for a long moment. "You'll make me do this, even knowing what she does to me?"

"I know you want her, and I know how bad. But I'm asking you to exercise that iron will of yours, and just dance with her." Vince insisted, knowing what it would cost Roger to comply, yet knowing that it was essential that he do so. "This whole thing is one big showcase to convince the families that they're going to have to look elsewhere than my wife and my partner to find a way to get at me."

"The _problem_ with that theory, Vince, is that it's likely to blow up in your face. It'll be obvious the minute I go up to her how underwhelmed at my chivalrous nature she is. She hates my guts, Vinnie!" Roger hissed.

"Wrong, Buckwheat. What she hates is your attitude towards her. You look at her like a piece of meat and treat her as if she had an I.Q. no bigger than her shoe size. You piss her off, man. And I can't say I blame her. But I know why you're doing it, Rog, and I don't blame you either. All I can tell you is that you and Trace are going to have to find some way to coexist, cause I can't pull this off without both of you helping me. And you're both going to have to start working at it now, cause when we move into that barn on Long Island, every one of our loaners'll be reporting back to their goombas about any disharmony in our ranks. I've already talked to her. She knows I'm siccing you on her. And she knows why," Vince finished, hating that he had to insist. Wishing he could insulate Lococco from what the man felt toward Tracy. 

Vince had tried to convince Tracy of the effect she had on Roger, but, not surprisingly, had made no progress, other than her admission that she was all too aware of his sexual attraction to her. The argument that his behavior was a self-defense mechanism aimed at keeping her at arms' length had been met with the cynical observation that it was working quite effectively. Even her glimpses into Lococco's soul had not convinced her that this man could feel for her something so out of his realm of experience that he had no notion how to deal with it. Vince had no idea how to explain to her what he _knew_ to be going on in Roger's damaged heart. And how fragile Lococco was in Tracy's presence.

Roger closed his eyes for a brief instant, then met Vince's grave blue gaze. "You can be a first class bastard, Vince. It's on your head, Buckwheat," he told him bitterly, as he turned and walked away, making for the cluster of donnas who held Tracy adrift in a sea of gossip. He felt her awareness of him even before he reached out to run the fingers of one hand along her forearm, lightly. "Your husband suggested we dance," he said softly into her ear.

"So he warned me," she replied, equally softly, glancing at him with a look that spoke volumes. "Excuse me, ladies, I promised Roger a dance," she apologized to the gaggle of women as she put her hand on Roger's arm.

Roger nodded at the women politely as he led her away.

"Well, at least you pried me loose from that horde of poisonous biddies," Tracy told him as they made their way to the dance floor to the strains of Strauss's Vienna Woods'.

"Happy to have been of service, ma'am," was his mocking reply. The rational part of Lococco's brain that remained unaffected by the nearness of the woman on his arm thanked any gods existent that it was a waltz. The staid conventions of that venerable step would buffer him from her, at least a bit. Only his hands need come in contact with her. As he caught her left hand in his right, and rested his other hand on her waist, he felt her place her free hand lightly on his shoulder. He moved with her into the crowd of dancers.

As the final strains of the waltz faded, he felt her withdraw from him, felt her loosen her polite hold on his shoulder, and a wave of irrational anger inundated him. When the orchestra began the unmistakable beat of a tango, sheer perversity caused him to maintain his hold on her, his hand where it lay at her waist drawing her body tight against his own as he swept her back onto the dance floor. He locked eyes with her as she stiffened in his arms momentarily, then saw her make the realization that to fight him would cause a scene. His focus narrowed to exclude everything save her as he led her through the dance, its' rhythm of choreographed sex allowing him the luxury of letting his hands roam her back, her waist, feeling her move under them, his sculptor's sense well able to infer her physiology from that touch. The faint flush of color in her cheeks and the sparkle of anger in her amber-green eyes told him she was as aware of his body — and its' arousal — as he was of hers. He let the barest flicker of a wicked grin cross his face. "Don't look at me, sweet thing, it was Vinnie's idea. He wanted us to make nice' for the general public."

"Nice'," she repeated frostily. "Then I'll spare him my opinion of that until the general public has gone home," she said grimly, turning her head in time with the music and missing the flash of devilment that glittered in Lococco's gray eyes.

Tracy focused on matching Roger's steps, at one level impressed by his skill as a dancer. He was undoubtedly one of those people who would excel at anything he chose to learn, and arrogant enough to rub everyone else's nose in it. The level of concentration it took to follow his lead left her nothing with which to battle his casual dominance. His unabashed sexual arousal disconcerted her even as her own body responded to it instinctively. That another man's arms should stir her this way on her wedding day frightened her, and she let that fear become anger. It added subtle emphasis to her movements in his arms and she felt his satisfaction at her body's betrayal of its' desire.

She let her anger show as she locked and unlocked eyes with him in the ritual head-turns of the tango even as he dipped her backward nearly to the floor, then swept her up into his embrace again, body once more fitted intimately to hers. As the music reached its' penultimate crescendo, Roger pulled her hard against his hips and bent her back over his arm, then swept her in a tight circle, finally flinging her away from him to end the dance standing at arm's length from her, his hold on her hand unrelenting, eyes never leaving hers.

Tracy stood, blazing with anger, as Lococco raised her hand to his mouth and brushed the knuckles with the softest of kisses, then bowed over it in a parody of Victorian chivalry. Releasing her with a deliberate flourish, he walked away from her without a backward glance, heading for the bar.

"I would kill any man who looked at my wife that way," Aiuppo said to Vince as they watched Roger's flamboyant finale.

Vince could see the bitter anger in every muscle as Lococco walked away, unaware of Vinnie's scrutiny. "He's more than half in love with her," he said to Rudy. "But I don't think he's figured it out, yet"

Aiuppo was silent for a very long moment, staring at Vince disbelievingly as Vinnie watched his partner solicit the bartender's attention. "And what will you do when he _does_?" he asked at last.

"I wish I knew," Vince sighed. He turned to catch Tracy's eye across the room. The brilliance of the smile she flashed him was matched by the glitter of anger in her eyes. He knew that marital bliss would not be the order of the evening. Nor, he suspected, would domestic tranquility. He supposed it was fortunate that there was virtually no one in attendance who knew either Roger or Tracy well enough to read the conflict between them in their body language.

"How far can you trust him, Vincenzo?" Rudy asked coldly.

"With my life, Rudy," Vince said simply.

"But can you trust him with _hers_?" was Aiuppo's pointed inquiry as he walked away from his stepson.

Vince watched Lococco down a double scotch, neat, in a single swallow, knowing how badly shaken the man was by the rigidity of his lean form, and by the impatient gesture to the bartender to refill his glass. Roger was not generally given to over-indulgence in anything, especially things that undermined his iron self-control. When he saw Lococco down the second scotch as rapidly as the first, he knew Roger was looking for anesthesia. Whatever it was he felt, clearly, he had no wish to _continue_ feeling it. When a nubile young woman of perhaps twenty five jogged Lococco's elbow, Roger's attention shifted from his third scotch to the woman beside him.

Vince watched as he switched on the incandescent charm he could display when he chose, watched the girl's startled response, her quickening interest. It was less than fifteen minutes before Roger took her by the arm and escorted her from the ballroom. Vince sighed, regretting having had to force the issue. Roger was hurting, with no real idea of why. Vince could only hope that willing arms and a willing body would ease it for him. He looked at his watch. Nearly eleven. His and Tracy's private flight, courtesy of Roger's Lear, would be departing for points west in under an hour from the rural air field less than ten miles away. Their luggage had already been stowed aboard. All that remained was for them to get to the plane.

Tracy had disappeared, presumably to change out of her gown, and he slipped a forefinger under the knot of his bow tie, loosening it. He left the party, still in full swing, wishing that he and Tracy could simply have eloped. He wished McPike and Dan could have been there. Wished that his wedding could have been both more and less than a political spectacle. He wondered if he could persuade Tracy to set a date for the small civil ceremony they had discussed, wondering if they could find an accommodating judge and a quiet judicial chamber in D.C. somewhere when they returned.

"God, yes," Tracy sighed emphatically when he broached the subject an hour into their flight. "Why do you think I didn't even _tell_ my mother about Rudy's dog and pony show'? She'd have thought I'd completely lost it. Just do me a favor, and pick a different best man." She looked out the little jet's window into the blackness of night at fifteen thousand feet, still shaken by Lococco's actions earlier in the evening and not willing to let the matter die undealt with. She felt Vince reach across the aisle to stoke her cheek and turned to face him. "Why does he do things like that?" she asked, genuinely wanting to know what in Lococco's nature made him push the envelope of socially acceptable behavior, made him act in ways calculated to maximize the discomfort of the people around him. 

"I wish I knew," he confessed. "He just lashes out at everyone around him when he hurts. And right now, he hurts over you."

Tracy snorted cynically. "It didn't take him long to find an available body to ease the pain," she snapped. "It took — what — maybe fifteen minutes for him to seduce that little red-head?"

"You saw that, huh?" Vince said wryly. "He's never been bashful."

"You're telling _me_?" Tracy retorted. I swear, the man has an absolutely voracious sexual appetite."

"He has a short attention span," Vince agreed. "Except when it comes to you."

"Well, I can tell you right now, Vince, I'm not one of the brainless floozies he seems to prefer. I'm sure he'll get over it. If I can just keep from killing him in the meantime." Tracy turned to look back out the window into the ebony night sky, watching the unchanging stars. "That stunt he pulled on the dance floor tonight really pushed the limits, Vinnie. I just hope everyone there missed the subtext. I was almost sure he was going to make love to me right there in front of God and everybody," she confessed. "And what really scared me was that there was a little part of me that almost wanted him to." She felt him stroke her palm gently. "Roger Lococco scares the shit out of me, Vinnie. Even more now than before. Life in the same house with him is going to be complicated."

"That's for sure," was Vinnie's weary reply. "I shouldn't have pushed him tonight. He just loses it every time he gets near you. The energy the two of you give off when you're in the same room is hard to miss. I don't know what to do about it. And you're wrong, Trace. I'm not sure he _will_ get over it. I've never seen him like this before."

The silence stretched between them, uninterrupted for several minutes as each of them pondered the question of Lococco and a peaceful coexistence. "In a weird kinda way, I guess it shouldn't surprise me, Roger being smitten by you," Vince said after a while.

"Why's that, assuming you're right and there's more than just hormones happening between us?" Tracy asked, Devil's Advocate' in her tone.

Vinnie considered his answer, not quite sure how to express the connection that seemed so clear to him. "Rog and I are like parts of the same whole, Trace. He once called us flip sides of the same coin." 

"You and Roger are _nothing_ alike," was Tracy's emphatic denial.

"You're wrong, Tracy. What you see when you look at Rog is the man I could have been. The man this work could have made me, if I hadn't had a couple of good guys out there to keep me from going off the deep end." Vince stared out of his own window. "This kind of life warps you. There are days when you look in the mirror and wonder who the hell it is that's looking back at you. Roger got to the point where there wasn't anyone there at all. He lost himself, Trace. Completely. When I met up with him, he was so close to the line, he was over it half the time. Sometimes _way_ over. And all Ketcher did was try to push him farther."

"Vince, I can't believe you would ever have gone so far into that darkness," Tracy argued.

"Then you'd be wrong, Tracy. I did. More than once. You read my files, you know I went section eight in Ninety, when I watched some small-town sheriff electrocute himself after confessing to a string of homicides all up and down the West Coast. All I could see was Sonny with his hand in the transformer. Over and over, like a song that gets stuck in your head." He shivered, slightly, not turning back to meet her look. He felt her weave her fingers into his own, and squeezed her hand gently, acknowledging her. "All I could do was run. I just couldn't handle it."

"Running wasn't a crime, Vinnie, and you did your best to get McPike some backup you knew could handle the job." Tracy said softly.

"Maybe not the way you define crime', no. But some of what I did while I was running sure was." He sighed, rubbing his forehead with his free hand. "I killed two men in cold blood, Trace."

"And were cleared of wrong-doing, Vince! They were waiting to kill _you_!" Tracy retorted, increasingly worried by the mood Vince was descending into.

"I shouldn't have been," Vince stated grimly. "By rights, my career should have been over that second. But McPike and Lifeguard went to bat for me with Beckstead when I came back in. He was R.D. at the time. Roger didn't have the luxury of that kind of help. He spent ten years without anyone he could trust to tell him the truth, to force him to look into that mirror often enough to make sure there was still someone there looking back. Except Preet. And I don't really know if she was capable of doing that for him."

"Vinnie, none of what happened to Roger was your fault," she said, wanting to comfort him and unable to see how. 

"No," he agreed, meeting her eyes at last. "But I see myself every time I look at him. _Every_ time. And I know I wouldn't have made it through what he's had to. I'd've put a bullet through my brain. He's maybe the strongest person I know, Tracy. I can't judge him. I won't. No one should. Not until they've had a real good look at the hell he spent most of his life in."

"So you think he's attracted to me for the same reasons you are?" Tracy asked, still groping for the connection.

"I think he's falling in love. For exactly the same reasons I did. Trace, when you pulled apart my entry strategy into Sonny's organization that day in D.C., you were looking straight into me. You saw through every lie, every rationalization, everything. I can't lie to you. You see the truth, even if you don't know it. And you make me see it, too. Lies scare me, Tracy. I need you. You're my mirror. You see me exactly the way I am, no excuses, no apologies. And you see into Roger exactly the same way. It's no wonder he wants you, even if he doesn't know why. He needs you as much as I do."

Tracy stared at him, thoughts in turmoil, unable to reconcile Lococco with the sort of need for truth that drove Vince. Or her role in that quest. "Where does that leave us?" she asked at last, dazed.

"I don't know," he admitted.

"I should never have told you how he made me feel tonight," Tracy sighed.

"You're wrong, hon. Don't ever think you can't tell me what you feel. Ever. If you can't talk to me, this marriage won't make it. Don't be afraid of telling me the truth, even if the truth is that you want Roger. Trust me, Tracy. Even with the hard stuff. The way I trust you." Vince raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it softly.

Tracy stared at him, fundamentally amazed. "You are the most honest person I've ever met. My god, it's no wonder you're so good at this kind of work."

"Honest? Tracy, my whole career has been based on _lies_." Vince rebutted this.

"You're wrong, Vinnie. The only lies have been about what you _claim_ to be, not what you _are_." She saw the complete lack of comprehension on his face. "You just don't see it, do you?"

"See what?" he asked, confused.

"You have an instinct — a knack — for putting people at their ease. For winning their trust. I'm not the only one who can see into people, Vinnie. Only, what you see is what they _could_ be, the good that's there. When they looked at you, they saw what you reflected back at them. Loyalty. Trust. My love, you wear your heart on your sleeve! Everything you feel shows!" She could see the incomprehension in his expression. "You _feel_, Vinnie. That's what I mean by honest'. You loved my uncle. And I'd be willing to bet that he knew it and loved you, too, even knowing what you were, all the way up to those last seconds before his heart stopped. You loved Susan Profitt, even knowing how twisted she was, or rather, you loved the woman you knew she might have been if her life had been different. And it was obvious she loved you. And Amber Twine. And Roger. And god knows how many others you let under your guard. And in every case, your way into their lives was the same. You seduced them with a macho line and braggadocio, then you became the perfect right hand. The loyal subordinate. And then you fell for them, one way or another. And bringing them down tore you up, every damned time." Tracy could feel the gathering of tears in her eyes, hurting for him, for the pain his work inflicted.

Vince stared back at her dumbly, unable to make any sort of response to the keenly observed truths Tracy could snatch out of what seemed so unrelated. Life with this woman would be a constant learning experience, he suddenly knew. And a good part of what she could teach him would be about himself.

"I don't see Roger generating that kind of trust, Vince. Whatever it was he did to win his targets' confidence had nothing to do with what he felt."

"You're wrong there, too, Tracy. I can only tell you about the Profitts, but they trusted him absolutely. Which was why he could destroy them the way he did. But he felt _every_ betrayal. And he's walking around with every one of them still eating at him, the way mine eat at me. You've looked into his eyes, Trace. Tell me you don't think he hurts every bit as much as I do."

She looked back at him, unable to deny what she had seen in Lococco's eyes. "You really do love him, don't you?" He didn't have to answer. She could see it in his face. Tracy was silent for a long while as she considered how to phrase her next question. "Have you are you -?"

"Lovers?" he supplied for her, watching the hesitant nod. "Roger is a card-carrying, dyed-in-the-wool homophobe. He'd go off on you like an atomic bomb if you even suggested something like that to him," his answer was dry, faintly amused at the idea.

Tracy digested this, something about it not meshing with her sense of Roger. "What about you?" she asked at last.

"You mean, would I sleep with a man?" he asked, quirking an eyebrow at her nod. "I _like_ girls." At her scowl, he relented. "Maybe, but I doubt it. It would have to be the right one. There are some trust issues, there."

She sighed, astonished at his willingness to confront an assault on his masculinity with such fearlessness. "The truth just doesn't scare you, does it?" she asked, awed.

Vince stroked her face gently. "Lies scare me a whole lot more," he told her.

Roger woke at three a.m., body and sheets dripping with sweat and more. The dream images that still whirled through his thoughts were clearer than they had ever been. No ambiguity remained in them, every nuance of his dream lover's being graven on his mind. In his nerve endings. The dance had served as the catalyst, he realized, his skin still tingling with her imagined touch. Even the luscious and willing young body he had made love to earlier that night had not satisfied the imperative need that drove him into the dream nearly nightly. 

In the dream, he lost himself in her arms, only to find himself reflected in her eyes, returned to a sense of wholeness, complete within the shelter of her body, her heart. It terrified him. And left him aching with longing and loss for something that had never been his to begin with. It was overwhelming, that loss, leaving him weeping silently. It was a long time before he slept again.

Roger had served as the subject of debate for most of the flight, only exhaustion ending the discussion as Tracy settled into Vinnie's lap, falling asleep with her head on his chest. The two-man flight crew woke them half an hour before their scheduled landing and they watched the topaz glow of pre-dawn San Francisco rush up to meet them as the little jet descended towards the airport.

They were met by a limo and taken to the Nob Hill building in which Roger kept a flat, leaning against each other wearily as they rode up the elevator. They watched the sun rise over the bay as they undressed and fell into bed.

Vince woke to the soft caress of Tracy's hands over him, rousing him out of sleep and into that sensual awareness of her body, her needs. They made love with a sense of discovery, realizing, odd as it seemed from a logical standpoint, that the vows they had made had in fact changed the dynamics of sex between them. It was as if the last barriers between them had evaporated, leaving them linked on an almost cellular level.

When the phone rang at one in the afternoon, Vince picked it up, annoyed. "What?" he asked, brusquely.

"What?" was Lococco's laugh. "Married life treating you that well?"

"It'll warm your sadistic little heart to know we spent the whole flight out here fighting. About _you_." Vince grinned, rolling onto his back and putting an arm around his wife.

"Serves you right, Buckwheat," was Roger's reply. "Consider it payback for the little charade you made me pull on the dance floor yesterday." 

"You're a generous bastard," Vince laughed. "The view from your penthouse is almost worth four hours of bickering, but the making-up is _definitely_ worth it."

"Making _out_, you mean," Lococco retorted sarcastically. "Get some clothes on. You have a business meeting to go to."

"What business meeting? I'm on my honeymoon, in case that little fact escaped your attention. Can't it wait?"

"I want you to meet with my financial advisors. They need to have a face to put to the name, and none of them are very happy with the changes I'm making. I want you to have some idea of the state of the estate'," Roger told him. "Bring the little woman with you. She'll probably get more out of it than you will."

"You have a real talent for spoiling the mood," Vince groused.

"Ask yourself this, Buckwheat: if you were exactly what you're pretending to be, would you wait? You're back under, Vince, I don't care what Coast you're on. Start acting like it."

"Spoil sport," Vince sighed, then groaned, as Tracy's hands, then mouth encompassed his loins. "I think we're about to start another argument," he said through gritted teeth. "Goodbye, Roger."

"Vince!" Roger's voice was imperative.

"_Goodbye_, Roger," Vince repeated as he fumbled the receiver back into its' cradle and laced his fingers through Tracy's hair without restricting her freedom of movement.

Roger's silent snarl as he slammed down his own receiver was eloquent. Getting — and keeping — Vinnie's attention when Tracy was anywhere within a two mile radius was a losing proposition. The fact that she undermined his own ability to concentrate almost as badly as she did Vince's didn't help the situation. He had hoped that getting them away — far away — from his immediate vicinity would help, but the distraction of _knowing_ what they were doing was replaced by the distraction of _wondering_ what they were doing. 

It was clearly going to be a long two weeks.

ÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅÅ

She stared fixedly at the newspaper that lay on the therapist's desk, open to the society pages, the photo there penetrating the blurry haze of her catatonia as recognition sank into her fogged brain. Slowly, she reached for the paper, picking it up and staring at the picture, forehead wrinkling as the image began to slowly sort itself into memory. 

"Susan?" Dr. Spencer inquired, recognizing that something, finally, had penetrated the walls of her patient's psychosis. "What is it?" To her astonishment, the woman raised her brunette head and for the first time, met the Doctor's eyes.

"My husband," she said, handing the newspaper across the desk to the psychologist.

Dr. Spencer took the paper and turned it to look at the picture. It was a wedding party, the groom a tall, dark-haired hunk whose attention was focused on the woman on his arm, a slender, graceful-looking creature who smiled up into his face. Behind them, stood the rest of the bridal party, the presumed best man a grim-looking man with wavy hair and an intense gaze. "Who?" she asked, startled. "Did you say your husband'?" 

Susan Profitt nodded, tapping a fingertip on the photo. "Vinnie. Vinnie Terranova."

Spencer read the caption under the picture, confirming that this was indeed the name printed there. She looked up at her patient in amazement. That ten years of catatonic silence would be broken by something like this baldly unexpected announcement was the last thing she could possibly have anticipated. She picked up her phone and dialed the extension for the records department. "Hello, David? I need the complete file on one of our patients, Susan Profitt. Yes, she was admitted in the spring of Eighty-eight. I need to know who committed her, and whether she was married at the time. Thanks. Bring the file to my office."

She hung up and turned her attention back to her patient. "Tell me about Vinnie," she requested, gently, leaning back in her desk chair.

David Piccolini dropped the file folder onto the desk top with subtle insolence, ignoring Nancy Spencer's annoyance. His attention was focused on the striking, dark-haired woman who sat dazedly in the chair opposite the therapist. He had seen her around the place, drifting ghost-like through the halls and common areas of Lakeview since he had started working there eighteen months before as a records clerk. This was the first time he had seen the lights on in the wide blue eyes, however. It was a noticeable improvement. In fact, it pointed out just how remarkably attractive she was. Her age was indeterminate, he guessed somewhere between thirty five and forty, her hair a rich brunette, with a centerfold's figure. Granted, it was hard to tell that particular detail given the bathrobe and nightgown she wore, but he had taken the liberty of glancing through her file before bringing it to the office. Deliberately, he caught her eye, and winked.

"That will be all, David," Dr. Spencer said firmly, missing none of this.

"Yes ma'am," he grinned at her and left the office.

He returned to his basement domain, determined to do a little research on Susan Profitt. It would give him something a little more interesting to do than the usual data entry. The job was hopelessly mundane, for the most part, though it did allow him access to computers and through them, the internet. Having had a number of brushes with the law regarding his activities online, one of the criteria of his most recent parole was that his access was to be strictly limited. Technically, the records and database computers that he worked on did not have internet access, however, the director of the facility and the management and nursing staff did. It had been a relatively simple matter to rig his system to access the hospital's network server, a tidy little hack allowing him to appear to the server as anyone of the staff allowed access on a rotating basis. As a black box', it was a relatively minor accomplishment, but it served its' purpose admirably. He logged onto his computer and breezed his way through the various password protections the hospital counted on to safeguard their clients' privacy as though they didn't exist. In point of fact, for him, they didn't. It had been one of the first hacks he had accomplished when he had started the job. Whistling cheerily, if off key, he began searching out all mention of Susan Profitt.


End file.
